A Walking Shadow
by lilyconrad
Summary: It is five years into the Empire's ascension, an order built on the blood and bodies of the Jedi. None survived, they say, and the handsome, icy profile of Lord Vader plastered across every Imperial city leaves no room for doubt in the minds of many. But Vader knows there is at least one left, one that escaped him on Mustafar all those years ago.
1. Adrift

The ship's windows were tall, spare mixes of metal and glass that rose to the incredibly high ceilings in what seemed to be a novice designer's attempt at elegance. The actual effect was far more foreboding: long rows of the black slate of space, one gaping door after another that led to the unknown, to the cold, to death.

In one of these frozen doorways stood a man, dwarfed by the size of it, made almost invisible by the dark clothes he wore.

He stood alone and looked outside, at the emptiness of deep space, and waited for the feeling to return. The feeling that he was not alone in this alien ship, long ago set to autopilot in whatever language this race had spoken.

He knew what it meant.

Troops had found him.

No, he corrected himself. Not troops. This would be a few soldiers. _Special forces. Assassins._

Everyone knew a squad was useless against a trained Jedi.

This junked-out ship lost in the void had been a perfect hideout for months. He was, in a strange way, going to miss the odd grinding every time it corrected its course, and the walls upon walls of unknown writing down in the lower levels, every bit as hopeful and ugly as the windows.

It had been a place for him to heal and train. To gather his thoughts and make a decision that had to be made.

The first two had been accomplished, as much as they could be. The last he was still considering. It was not a decision he wanted to make, and he'd danced around it almost nightly in his walks past these windows without ever getting closer to an answer.

It was a difficult job, talking yourself into killing your padawan.

Now, as he met the empty eyes of space on the other side of the glass, he felt no closer to accepting or rejecting such a monstrous idea and that hesitation made him loathe the soft, ghostly lines of his own reflection in the glass.

He was almost relieved to finally have a fight on his hands, something to take his mind away from it.

 _Let them come._

Closing his eyes, he tilted his head, reaching out with his mind to see what the Empire had in store for him this evening.

The feeling coalesced, and he frowned as it continued to shrink into something like what you see after staring at the sun, amorphous and dark against the deep blacks and greys of his closed eyes.

They hadn't sent a handful of assassins. They'd only sent one.

A Force-wielder.

The feeling pushed against him, harder, prodding him with the certainty that the other was on the move, coming closer. It would take this entity a while to cross the ship, but he would, as dangerous and inescapable as a flood after heavy spring rains.

 _He? Yes, he…_

The Jedi knew they'd sent a man. A young one, in fact. One he knew as well as the scar across his own back or the sunsets of his homeworld.

Opening his eyes, Obi Wan felt a sudden, intense jealousy of the unknown people that had built this ship and then vanished. They were gone, all of their loves and struggles and ambitions and hopes long, long over.

He was not so lucky.

It looked like the universe had decided it was tired of waiting for his answer to the question that had plagued him all this time.

Tonight he would find out if he had it in him to kill his padawan.


	2. Reunion

As the desolate ship drifted through the void, its passage as silent as the stars it blocked, a single spark of light flared to life along the thick hull, a starfighter tucked up into the odd angles and lines of the larger vessel.

The controls and panels flickering on revealed an empty cockpit and the main computer running through diagnostics and a preflight check routine. Each number ticked away in orderly shapes, its twin displayed on the com Obi-Wan tucked back into his robes.

27 minutes until it would be ready to fly.

He looked down the massive hall, its ceiling almost lost in shadows despite the harsh glare the ship's nuclear power system provided. Anakin would be here sooner than 27 minutes.

No. Not Anakin.

 _That thing that choked Padme to death on Mustafar is not your padawan._

Another swirl of guilt passed through him, an icy wind that bit no less each time he thought of it. In his time on the run, he'd kept hope alive that somehow she'd been all right, that C-3PO had made it back to the medics with her. That hope had lasted exactly three system transport hops and 57 standard days.

He had dared to come in from the hinterlands of a water world, face tanned and body thin, to a floating city where few questions were asked and all manner of things were available for sale. He'd been hoping to buy a ferry ticket to the capital city and then a ship for the next leg of his aimless journey away from the Empire.

"Bad season to buy," the dealer had muttered, waving his four arms but eventually taking the credits the Jedi had earned working nets on a fishing boat. "You should wait until winter."

"Why?" Obi-Wan had learned early on in his stay the dominant race here was superstitious bordering on neurotic, and his Coruscant breeding made him raise an eyebrow in exasperation.

"The little queen is dead, my friend. The one from Naboo," the man helpfully added when he mistook Obi-Wan's shock for puzzlement. He waved a green hand back and forth as if brushing away flies. "She died in some covert mission somewhere, they say. Poor girl."

Obi-Wan blinked at him, not wanting to hear the words he'd dreaded all of this time but unable to block them out. They rolled past him, each one tearing away a part of him as surely as an expert sniper using him for target practice.

"My pale offworlder, do you not have this saying on your own world? 'Start a journey in the same season as a royal death, and your journey will end badly.' My uncle had this happen to him once, you know..."

That day the Jedi got his ticket, boarded the ferry, and lost his way.

It was 11 more standard days before he stopped drinking long enough to firmly place where he was. Surprisingly, and to the disappointment of the darkest corner of his mind, he was still alive, now with a starfighter on an abandoned Jedi outpost far away from the cheerful waterworld man and his horrid news.

There were vague memories of people helping him. No one he knew. Strangers who knew his face from the holonews reports, or those who recognized the robes in his pack and the unique weapon that hung at his side as signs of an order that had helped them or their families or their peoples in the past.

Careful hands had passed him along from place to place and day to day, believing him to be good, someone worth saving.

He had doubted that. He still did.

But in the four years that had crawled by, and all of the solitary time since that first painful stirring back to consciousness in the empty base, Obi-Wan trusted that there was a reason he was still alive. His own master's memory echoed in his mind, keeping him going through the scattershot months, whispering over icy flatlands or jungle sounds or the black emptiness of space that Obi-Wan needed to trust in the Force.

"I have tried, Master," he now muttered to the empty hall before him. "Is this what the Force truly wants?"

 _Padme, dead. Her child, dead._

 _All of the Jedi. Dead._

 _He calls himself Vader. You must cut him down._

This was not the Force speaking to him, he knew. This was his own voice, the same angry voice that had urged him on since the idea had come to him all those months ago.

 _He is not himself anymore._

But this wasn't true, either. The Empire's propaganda machine had been quick to plaster his former padawan's face everywhere it could. And for all of the evil he had committed, Anakin was as young and handsome as he'd ever been, his angelic profile fine against the obscene halo of the Imperial logo behind him.

 _All lost. Everything is lost. I have to stop him._

His eyes closed as he willed himself to commit to those words, to make it a pledge. _I cannot fail. I cannot let him walk away from this._

The other Force-wielder on board was closer now, just a few passages away, the taint of corruption a sickly-sweet note inside Obi-Wan's mind.

He drew up to his full height, feeling the weight of his robes on him. They had been carefully packed away during his exile when others had been around, but here, alone, he had returned as much as he could to the training of a temple now overrun with blasphemy and lies.

Perhaps it would throw the thing that had been Anakin to see his master looking just as he had at their last battle.

Obi-Wan hoped so.

He took a deep, cleansing breath and forced the panicked, angry voice shouting for vengeance to the back of his mind. It went with claws out, dragging them along his brain until he ground his teeth in concentration, but it went.

All was silent in the hall. All was silent in his mind.

The com vibrated against his chest. 15 standard minutes to ship readiness.

Silence returned.

When the doors opened at the far end of the hall, he did not move. He took in the billowing lines of black, the arrogant strut of the figure walking toward him.

The yellow eyes, the ones the propaganda engineers were careful to edit down to a more acceptable brown, were too far away to see just yet.

The red lightsaber was much easier to make out, already lit even though they were still too far away from each other to speak.

Qui-Gon's former padawan waited, hand hanging loosely at his side. _Let the monster speak first. I have nothing to say to him._ The last sentence was shakier in his mind than he wanted, but it would have to do. Conviction was a hard thing to find today, but Obi-Wan tried to put it on just as he had his robes and his saber.

There was only the click of boots and the faintest hiss of the saber from the dragon at the end of the hall.

Like a painful, forgotten memory drifting back up into your mind, Anakin Skywalker drew nearer until every detail was clear. The horrible sulphur-hued eyes, the hateful scowl, the finely worked black leather and robes with the Empire's logo rendered on his right shoulder. "You." He stopped, lifting his chin, still well out of strike range for either of them.

Obi-Wan studied his face, listened to the venom in the word. "You have been hunting me yourself." It was not a question. The thought skipped like a stone across the calm surface of his mind, not touching the anger and grief hastily pinned below.

"They told me you were dead in the base collapse at Mustafar. I knew better."

"Did you? Worried you'd missed one in all the general slaughter?" Sarcasm was safe, as old a habit as breathing. Another stone across the pond.

Anakin spun his saber thoughtlessly at his side, an old tell that meant he felt he was in no danger and had time to assess things. Obi-Wan began to walk to the side, and Anakin followed suit, the two marking a large, lazy circle that kept the other one opposite.

"I owed it to you after you murdered my wife."

The anger swept upward. Obi-Wan drew his saber before he wrestled the emotion under control again, and the weapon flared to life beside him, their path now marked by a slow pirouette of blue and red. "I… I killed your wife? Did Sidious tell you that?"

"You brought her to Mustafar. I wasn't ready, I didn't have control yet. It wasn't my fault! The two of you pushed me to it! If only you had listened to me! None of this would have happened!" The red saber spun now, once beside its wielder before it curved upward to snap into place next to the Sith lord's hate-filled face.

Another habit from younger days. Anakin was deciding what to do. Obi-Wan had a few more steps before the attack would come.

As frightened and angry as he was, Obi-Wan felt a deep sadness trace itself over the anguish he already felt, a line of ice settling over a winter river. This creature, this horrible force of destruction forged by loss and trickery, was still his padawan. Still young and uncertain and eager to blame everyone but himself.

 _Padme. Yoda. My brother and sister Jedi. Forgive me. I cannot kill this boy._

On the third step Anakin whirled at him, blade slicing through the air toward Obi-Wan's face followed by a quick twist as he aimed a kick at his chest.

The red line of death was answered with a blue one, Obi-Wan grunting as he ducked and used his saber to shove the attack past him overhead, spinning around just enough Anakin's boot sailed past him.

He elbowed Anakin in the face as he slammed a foot down, sending his former padawan sprawling across the smooth tiles of the floor as he tripped over Obi-Wan's boot.

In a tumble and growl, the man was upright once again, charging at him as he slashed his saber down in a block.

Death whirled through the air as they parried and struck, both better than they had been the last time this scene played out, but only one trying desperately to wound while the other sought to end.

It was a silent battle, no words between them save grunts of effort as they kicked and wheeled and spun themselves across the hall.

The com buzzed against Obi-Wan's chest as he slid past Anakin, rolling back onto his feet and racing for the far doors that led into the maze of walls and writing below. He turned and danced as he went, parrying blows made ragged with frustrated rage.

"You can't escape me!" Anakin howled, right on his heels.

5 minutes to ship readiness.

If he could live that long.


	3. Blackbird

In arcs of hissing blue and red, Anakin pursued his former master through the bowels of the strange ship.

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan pleaded, thrusting open a large set of doors with the Force and backing through them. Anakin saw his eyes dart to the side and felt the Force rise up again as Obi-Wan tried to slam them shut in his face.

He brought up his own hand and swept it to the side, grinding the doors back open so hard they crumpled off of their tracks and buckled the walls.

Obi-Wan thought doors would stop him.

 _That anything would stop me._

The young Sith Lord gave a short, bitter laugh as he whirled for another attack. How little his old master knew of his power.

It was time he showed him.

They spilled out into what looked like a crude impersonation of a hedge maze, a tangle of walls the height of a man with what might have been exits at the far end. Every inch of the stone maze was covered with jittery lines of carved writing that danced and jumped in the swirling light of their battle: now here, now gone.

"Anakin, you have to listen!"

Obi-Wan's face appeared and disappeared in the flashes of light, concentration battling with anger, with fear. Anakin felt a deep and primal satisfaction as he saw this, a thundercloud swelling on a summer horizon.

"I am not your enemy! Sidious has done this to you!"

"Shut up!"

Their sabers clashed and tore into the walls as they spun wide, ending unknown stories with flares of sparks and seething red gashes.

"Listen, Anakin! Please! This is not you! This is not what Padme would have wanted!"

A moment of hesitation slowed Anakin's swing and Obi-Wan easily parried. "SHUT UP!"

He took another wild swing before the Jedi viciously kicked and shoved him back onto the floor to knock his head against the rough tiles. He was dimly aware of Obi-Wan running to disappear into the maze, his footfalls echoing wildly, before he regained his feet and balance.

 _He wants you to charge in there. He's been here long enough he probably knows this thing inside and out._

Anakin was smarter than that. Let the fool try to bait him like this.

He stood there, at the mouth of the maze, and listened to the low hum of his blade as Obi-Wan called out to him from somewhere inside. "Padme wouldn't want you to be like this, Anakin!"

 _Are those exits at the far end? Should I block them off?_

 _No._ From the sound of it, the Jedi was still well on Anakin's side of the giant room. There was time.

 _Give him hope he can escape. Then take it from him._

 _There will be no escape today._

Another anguished shout that sounded like it was in the same place as the last one. "Sidious is the reason Padme is dead! He turned you into this! Why can't you see that? He murdered the Jedi! Your brothers and sisters! He is evil!"

A hint of doubt crept into Anakin, the lightest touch of a spider's legs as it runs across bare skin.

He closed his eyes and focused.

The younger man's new master had once told Anakin that he needed no special armor against physical attacks, that his skills were so great leathers and robes were enough.

He had, however, cautioned Anakin against attacks on the psyche, on the spirit, soft and squirming feelings that would stunt his growth in the Dark Side.

"You are weakest there," he had said, extending one wiry finger to point at his apprentice's chest. "You need the most armor there, because the knife that slips in will be so thin, so razor sharp the faintest nick will poison and kill you. You must not be cut down before you are ready, Lord Vader. Your true ascension will mark the beginning of a new era in the galaxy."

"What sort of armor do you mean then, master?"

"Metal and polycarbon and the like are nothing but dumb and blind tools, my apprentice. True armor comes from your soul, young one. Never forget the ones you love and have lost. Keep them close to your heart. Call on them when you feel yourself straying from what is needed and what must be done."

And so Anakin Skywalker, hearing Obi-Wan Kenobi's pleas and a name that sent white fire through his heart, reached for his armor.

The memory came quickly. It was one he had called on before.

A lazy sunset painting a garden in hazy light, flowers and trees all orange and gold.

Padme in his arms, her warm body against his and her head on his chest. In this memory, he sang quietly to her, his voice low and gentle. The song was a repeating one, the ending locked into the beginning to go on as long as you liked, and he would sing it twice before trailing off into a hum of the melody.

"Blackbird,  
Once you were red.  
Oh, blackbird, blackbird,  
How long you bled!  
Till nothing was left  
But black!  
Poor blackbird…"

And Padme would ask him where he learned such a sad song, and he would say it was a lullaby his mother would sing to him when he was little, before he and Padme met. They would pause, both remembering the little hovel on a narrow road on a backward world, but she would not mock or pity him for those first few years of his life. She would, in this memory, kiss his hand and say that it was a beautiful song and that she was sorry his mother was gone.

And she would stroke his hair and call him her blackbird, just as his mother had long ago.

 _She is dead. She is gone._

 _I will never hold her again._

 _Never._

Sidious was right, as he always was. The moment of doubt was no more, like that sunset on a faraway world in a faraway life.

He opened his eyes and realized Obi-Wan had gone silent at some point during his meditation. Just as he raised his hand to crush the distant doors at the far end of the room, a sharp fear that he'd let him escape rising, the Jedi started up again from the same place.

"I will not kill you, Anakin!"

 _Good. He's still here. In the same spot, no less. Still stupid and arrogant and going to die._ Relief washed over Anakin and he looked around at the outer ring of walls of the maze, studying their height and thickness, especially around the area Obi-Wan's voice was coming from.

His former master continued calling to him from wherever he was hiding, his voice echoing back and forth, but Anakin didn't even hear the words. He only heard the droning of the man who had brought Anakin's wife to die, the proud, foolish man who thought he knew everything.

Anakin lifted one hand and snarled, shoving it forward, and the outermost wall near Obi-Wan began to crumple and tilt into the maze. Caught in a silent wind, it suddenly blew inward, against the wall behind it. Thunder boomed, a wave of harsh noise growing as it rolled among the walls and high ceiling far above them.

After a second, no doubt startled, Obi-Wan started up his pointless whining again. "Anakin! Listen to me!"

"If you won't come out and fight, you can die in there! It's all the same to me!"

 _Oh, blackbird_ , _blackbird…_

Anakin let out a cry of fury, free hand sweeping through the air.

The outer maze walls, all of them now, trembled and slammed inward, and Anakin gave a savage grin through the intense effort it took to do it. "Die! Die, you weak fool!" The next layer of walls crumpled inward, and then the next, and then the next, more rolls of thunder shaking the floor beneath him. Obi-Wan fell silent. There was just the rough center of the maze left now. Only one place for the worthless rat to hide.

 _I love you, Padme. I love you so much and you're dead. You're dead and I'm still here and it hurts so much._

The final sets of walls gave way at the same time, smashing into a nasty twist of stone and smoke in the middle of the level. The vicious final impact of rock on rock sent debris flying all the way back to where Anakin stood, pebbles bouncing off of his shoulder and the Imperial insignia there as the last deafening crack of sound faded away.

 _Poor blackbird..._

Obi-Wan spoke again. From under the rubble.

"I am sorry, Anakin."

He sounded many things: sad, defeated, exhausted. He sounded everything but dead.

His old padawan let the precious memory go with a curse, bounding in along the tilted walls to the top of the pile of rubble, saber drawn.

There on the floor, just visible between two huge slabs of cracked stone, was the faint, unmistakable outline of a com.

A new rumbling came from behind him, deep and everywhere all at once. Anakin whirled, but the room was empty.

The thunderous vibration was coming from outside, along the hull. A starfighter had just launched.

The Sith lord snapped his lightsaber off.

In his rage, he'd destroyed the way to the doors across the level, the fastest exits out. He'd have to go back the long way to reach his own ship.

Obi-Wan had escaped. For now.

But he would still catch him, a half-hour headstart or not. It would be child's play, racing his sleek new model against the junker Obi-Wan was no doubt flying.

Another jolt knocked him off of his feet, a curiously muffled boom that left everything intact around him.

It took him a second to place the sound. An engine exploding.

The bastard had shot out his own starfighter's engine.

Anakin scrambled to his feet with a loud yell and turned to the maze, setting his fury loose on it. The walls undulated like tidal waves as they slammed into each other again and again, the writhing storm deafening. He cursed and screamed and shouted, sinking to his knees and balling his gloved fists in his hair as he let the wrath wash out over the room, trying to bleed out a poison that had no end. A headache blossomed behind his eyes, sharp and pounding, but he ignored it, lost in the din and madness.

Only when there was nothing left but rocks and pebbles, a strange new beach trillions of miles from any ocean, did Anakin trust himself to pull out his own communicator and punch in Coruscant.

A short, clipped conversation later and he was alone again, waiting for retrieval.

He weakly stood up in the midst of the destruction he'd wrought and tried to focus, to calm himself and stay conscious through the searing pain in his head: a young man in black alone in silence on a ship of the dead.


	4. Shades of the Past

Jalene had grown up just a few lanes over from the Jedi Temple, its tall towers as much a landmark and part of her memory as her own mother's gentle hands rocking her to sleep. She had been small when the Empire began, and she knew the towers weren't always painted black and red with banners trailing from the tops. But whenever she tried to remember the temple as it was, and the little figures in brown and white that hurried back and forth around it, there were only the red and black and garrisons of stiff white.

The temple was now a museum, "The True Reflection of the Glorious Future of the Empire That Expands to the Edge of the Universe", if one were to give its full and proper name, spiraling on like the new wall that ringed the compound.

Most of the locals still called it the Temple, if quietly, but in public it was always the Museum, or the Reflection. Jalene was still somewhat confused by all of these linguistic twins, and annoyed at the task of having to learn a second word for something that she had known perfectly well how to say before.

Nothing for that matter seemed to stay the same anywhere in Jalene's world these days. Her world's allies became enemies. Friendly systems became threats. Bullies at her school now called the weak kids "Windu" instead of "Dooku" every time they pushed them down.

Jalene knew her family was lucky to serve the fifth level of the House of the Heavenly Armor of Fire, and that her father had given up a higher position on their home planet to come serve as footman to the Fifth.

Here, the Fifth was just another little noble house from an Outer Rim planet, but it was _here_.

The young girl was now just old enough to know why her father and mother did that, packing up and leaving their entire lives behind for Coruscant. They wanted her to grow up Coruscanti, to be as elegant and as visible as the sparkling jewels of ships overhead.

Her role in all of this was simply to to be a good member of society, and not to say or do anything that would call their loyalty to the leaders of Coruscant into question. Thoughts of the temple from Before were questionable, but permissible as long as they were not said aloud.

Nothing was to bring attention to her family as they worked their way up in the society here. Nothing to remotely connect them in any way to shady dealings or the feared Separatists.

And that was why Jalene, young daughter of the Right Hand of the Fifth, turned away from her balcony and went inside without telling anyone what she saw.

A figure, far below and away, climbing the temple-museum's outer wall.

* * *

Music drifted through a long room painted in gentle cream, soft strains of an Alderaan choir that echoed a little oddly if you stood in the corners. The acoustics of the room had never been considered in its prior incarnation as a training hall, and despite the work of a few harried Imperial engineers during the spiraling redesign of the Museum, the sound quality was never quite the same as the other rooms that had been converted to living space in this new acquisition of the Empire. On one wall rose a fanciful doorway of marble, faint patterns of leaves and ivy growing up in abandon and total disregard for the austere obsidian and slate that waited on the other side in the Museum proper.

When the very rare groups of visitors allowed into the Museum reached the flat, forbidding doors that marked off this section of rooms a guide would in soft, reverential tones explain that these were the rooms of the esteemed Lord Vader, for those rare times he was not out hunting the wretched enemies of the Empire. His efforts were tireless in this matter, the guide would add, and he was rarely at home.

As all of the high-ranking officials or visiting nobility would nod and make whatever denoted soft, approving gasps in their home languages, the guide would say very solemnly that it was not an easy choice for the Lord Vader to live here, given what had happened, but that he had taken it upon himself to make himself a living symbol of the Empire's victory over the corrupt Jedi, and would remain here as long as their evil presence could still be felt.

At which point any beings in the group with even the slightest telepathic sensitivity would nod or grip their wine glasses a little tighter, wondering how anyone could spend more than a day in this place. The smarter ones would guess, correctly though they would never know it, that Lord Vader stayed here only on direct order from the Emperor.

Inside the unassuming slate doors, down the hall in the room lit with gentle light and music, stood one of several pairs of guards that patrolled this wing.

The home guard troops assigned to this end of the Museum called it the Cloud, as it was the only set of rooms and halls with softly colored walls, marble and natural light. None of this group of clone soldiers had ever seen Naboo, and so they didn't recognize this comparatively crude reproduction swirling in stone around them.

The strange feeling that set a few visitors on edge had no effect on them as they had been chosen to be neither psychically sensitive nor particularly curious.

Now the two stood aside from the door to the long room as one young woman, a courtesan from the looks of her, came striding down toward them from halls further back in the Cloud. Brushing at her robes, jeweled bracelets clinking on her hands, she seemed ill at ease, and her gowns were slightly wrinkled. It was odd, but if there was one thing rarer in the Museum than this island of creams and golds set in a sea of black and red, it was questions.

The soldiers watched her come closer, and when she did not disappear or turn to reveal some horrid, impossible wound down her back, they nodded to her and stood aside to let her in.

Vader, during one especially drunk and angry night, had called all of the guards together to tell them this whole place was haunted and that they were to be on the lookout for strange apparitions. He had cautioned them in broken slurring to watch out especially for the three children that sometimes stood in the main hall, tiny shadows that had no faces but held hands and turned their heads to watch you pass by.

Several of the guards, including the two now watching the girl enter the room, had been glad for their helmets so the Lord couldn't see their eyebrows raise in disbelief. It was sometimes a strange shift working here, but never because of anything supernatural.

She swirled in past them without a word and joined a dozen similarly dressed young men and women milling about in a long stretch of statues and paintings. They were in a slow, languid orbit around a dark star: the Lord Vader himself, returned just a few days ago from some secret mission that had apparently not gone well.

The courtesan tilted her head, her dark eyes thoughtful, as she listened to two of the handsome men whispering near her. "First time out of his rooms in all the days I've been sent for this week. I thought he'd never come out."

"Like you stand a chance."

"Just as good as you. We look a lot alike, Parne."

"I suppose we do. Which makes it odd we've both been sent for at the same party."

The second man brushed at his coat, a long affair traced in silver. "I hear whoever is sending out invitations for men of our kind always asks for the same general look when it comes to Vader."

"Does he even like men?" the one named Parne asked.

"Might as well ask that about women. They're not having any more luck than we are. Never have in the half-dozen times I've been called here. Even before this little mission."

"I'd say we're having all the luck we need. Did you hear he tore apart an entire room when he got back this time?"

"No… is that the cratered hole my skiff flew by as it came in to land?"

"That's the one. They say he was trashing it for an hour straight."

"Has a sweet disposition, doesn't he? But," and here he smiled in a playful way, "you do have to wonder, what it would be like to-" The man in silver stopped and looked at the young woman now openly watching them. "Hello, my dear. New here? First night?" His smile was not unkind, but Parne looked at her disapprovingly.

"Yes. Yes it is," she said, a faint accent in her voice neither of them could place.

"I can tell," Parne sniffed as his eyes traced down and then back up her, noting the disarray of her gown's braided straps and the skewed knot of a few dangling ornaments in her hair.

The man in silver sighed and reached out to gently untangle the golden chains in her hair so they could hang freely. "What's your name?"

"Allari."

"Allari, a pleasure. I am Darsiem and this is my friend Parne." Darsiem finished fixing one ornament and moved on to the next, the scent of his cologne dark and rich as he leaned in. "Poor girl. They sent you to Lord Vader, who you will soon learn would rather brood and glare than have even a pleasant conversation with any fine young blossom or branch sent to him for company."

"And drink. Don't forget about the drinking," Parne said, glancing back toward the center of the room.

"Hush, you'll upset her." The other man patted her hair and leaned forward. "My dear, even if this were expertly braided, which I am afraid it is not, the Pearl of the Sea Dragon hairstyle went out of style on Coruscant five standard years ago. Next time your house sends you have them check you over first, all right?"

She nodded, watching the center of the room with a hint of anxiety in her eyes.

"This is a lovely ornament, though." Darsiem traced his finger along the last piece, a fine metal knotwork nestled in her dark hair. "Is this actually from Naboo?"

"I think so," Allari said uncertainly, looking back at him, and Darsiem, long a master of the lie and half-truth, wondered why a courtesan would undersell herself. If he had a genuine piece from the planet that Vader seemed obsessed with, he thought to himself, he'd be jumping on top of one of the tables waving it around.

But, as the soldiers knew, he also knew. Questions in this place were never a good idea. "Well, if it isn't, it's a very beautiful copy. Your house took better care of you than I thought."

"You should show Vader and let him tell us if it's real. I'm bored. I want to see something actually happen," Parne muttered, folding his arms. "It feels like I've spent my whole life in this damned room trying to make that man smile."

He got his wish only a few minutes later, when the Lord Vader himself was led over by a group of the women determined to embarrass their new competition. "How could they have let her in like this, my Lord?" one woman giggled, close to him but careful not to actually touch him. Darsiem always found that amusing, how the kind of women who relied on clinging and touches to work their charms had to settle for petting the air near the young man.

He understood, of course. Vader felt to him like a barely tamed cat from the jungles of Kashyyyk, a pretty and deadly creature that could turn on you and eat you whole if the urge struck. The boredom in his eyes did nothing to change that impression: this whole room of carefully arraigned beauty and youth was wasted on him.

As Parne had pointed out earlier, this cat had seen nothing worth taking a bite of in all the times he'd been here, and Darsiem wondered not for the first time why anyone would foot such a ridiculous bill for no apparent reason.

"She can't even tell you stories about her homeworld, I bet," one of the girls said, her familiar tone betrayed by the fact she stayed just as carefully far away from him as the others. Looking at Allari, another one sniffed, "That's the only thing our Lord likes to hear, you know. Stories about other worlds. Isn't that right, my Lord? He's looking for just the right place to escape to with one of us!"

"A lord's duty is to learn his systems, though I'd rather do so from maps," came the sharp reply as the man at the center of a dozen stares rubbed his head and held out his glass for another drink. "But the servants have paid for you and I can't send you all back to be punished for leaving early."

A third girl quickly poured it and smirked at Allari as if his dismissive tone had been the opposite.

"Now, my lord, don't be so dark! You said that our cheerfulness distracts you!" one of the braver women close to him said, patting at her own complicated hairstyle. "You said you hate silence, and you must admit we are very good at keeping away silence."

"That you are. You are most definitely masters of never knowing when to shut up."

 _All of these women are all brown-haired_ , Allari thought. _And brown eyed. Like me_. And they were all glaring from over his shoulder as he sighed and put his drink aside on one of the tables before turning to her.

"Look, girl, I have told my servants to stop sending for entertainment. I am entertained," he growled, "and unless you come from some planet I have never visited I ask that you enjoy some nice wine, look at some pretty pictures, and leave me alone. As you can see, I have more than enough storytellers eager to take up my time." As he spoke, just as Darsiem and Parne had done, his strange yellow eyes, those jungle cat eyes, wandered up to her hair.

They stopped. And then widened.

"You. Come with me. Now."

Amid gasps and protests, he took her arm and marched away from the halo of women that had so confidently dismissed Allari, the greatly mismatched pair trailing a puzzled crowd behind them. Darsiem and Parne brought up the back of the group, exchanging raised eyebrows. Vader certainly didn't seem pleased by the recognition. Was this girl about to have the shortest career ever in the gilded flowers of the Coruscanti world?

Allari walked with him, head held high, but her breaths were quick and short as he gave her a small push into a much smaller room and slammed the door behind them, cutting off the soft music and surprised gasps of the group left behind.

This was a dimly-lit library of some sort, with scrolls and books and holocrons stacked aimlessly on tables and chairs, the ghost of Naboo in the swirls and curves of the furniture.

The door rattling in its hinges sent a shudder through the wall and a few scrolls tumbled lightly from one table to unroll along the floor in the corner. Lord Vader stood, a shadow among shadows, and pointed at her.

"Tell me where you got that." There was no music in this room, only the low threat of his voice.

"What?"

"Don't play with me, girl. That hair pin." He took a step forward, the wavering light of the projected fire lamps bringing his angry face into view. "That was her pin. I gave that to her."

She watched him, silent, and as the moments passed with no words spoken uncertainty grew first in his face and then in his voice, as if he was beginning to realize something horrible might be about to happen in this small, dark room. "Are you… are you really here? I mean… alive?"

"I don't know what you mean…" She brought her hand up to her chest, clutching at it, as she took a step back.

The young lord narrowed his eyes. "You are," he muttered more to himself than to her. "You're not like the others I've seen." The brief flash of doubt was gone and he was back in control. "Tell me where you got that pin."

He took another step toward her, and a dark, electric tension began to fill the room. It felt like a storm just over the horizon, lightning building for a beautiful, deadly leap from cloud to ground. "Tell me."

"I…" Lord Vader was almost on top of her now, and he had a moment to think how young this dark haired woman looked, how completely terrified, and then a sharp pain shot through his side.

She had stabbed him.

He staggered back, and Allari pulled the knife out as he went, bringing it up to stab again, the fear in her eyes as real as the pain in his. But there was something else there too, he saw: a determination, a promise being kept. She came at him again, fierce and fast despite being so much smaller than him.

"Guards!" he tried to call, but the pain when he inhaled to shout left him breathless. He could only bring up one arm to ward off the sharp blade slicing down toward him as he stumbled back.

It buried itself in his forearm, and as the second wave of pain rushed through him his confusion and fear were swept away.

There was only anger.

He drew back his uninjured arm and knocked her aside as she reached back into her robes. Staggering to his full height, the handle protruding from his arm, he dodged as she lunged at him, trying to knock him back over.

Even as she whipped another blade out his hand was up, sending a harsh thrust of the Force to slam her against the shelves lining the far wall.

Holocrons shivered in their stands as she fell to the ground, her knife skittering out of reach. The energy in the room now was palpable, like the illusory fire lights had suddenly become real and were drowning the air in crackling heat.

She scrabbled away from him, curling up in a corner among the bright shapes of the fallen holocrons that he kicked aside stalking over to her.

"You tried to trick me with something of hers!" he hissed as he stood over her, yanking the knife free and flinging it away, eyes never leaving her. "Where did you get it? Where?!"

"You know where!" she spat back, fear and anger mixed with that same odd pride. "I am the first ghost, and I will not be the last!"

He had brought his hand up to pin her with the Force, to keep her still until he could send for help, but her strange words rattled the deep concentration he needed to see through the pain now flowing freely from his arm to his side and back again.

And then the girl who called herself a ghost did the second strange thing of the night. She brought up her arm and bit down on a jewel in one of her bracelets.

He realized too late it was actually a poison capsule, and as she inhaled a tiny puff of grey her eyes met his, full of hate and victory. "You will die, Anakin Skywalker, for what you have done. You will die!"

Slapping the com on the wall, shouting hoarsely over the pain, he watched as she fell over, repeating the same sentence again and again- "You will die!"- until her body succumbed to the toxin and the only thing left in her young, pretty brown eyes was the unknowing, uncaring stare of the dead.

He slid to the floor, looking at the young woman sprawled among the holocrons, and began to laugh, a harsh jarring sound interrupted by gasps of pain.

When the guards rushed in, he was lying on his back next to her but still laughing, coughing up blood and unable to stop himself as he clutched a small bit of gold in his hand. "I've gone mad!" he said, the words flying out in crimson-stained drops, as they strapped him into the droid gurney and hustled him out past the courtesans. "I've gone mad!"

Each one of the pretty faces would openly be given a hefty bonus for their attendance that night, a terse notice that no more invitations would be sent, and a secret additional message that speaking of the Lord's behavior to anyone would result in their quick, painful deaths. As Darsiem sat in his little apartment, reading over the letter, he would think to himself it was still worth it even if he never spoke of it to another: being present when the Great Lord of the Empire that Expands to the Edge of the Universe had lost his mind, even if only for a little while.

That wasn't something you saw every day.

And, he realized as he looked around the city draped in Imperial colors, it had felt rather satisfying to watch.


	5. Crossroad

Obi-Wan listened to the harsh, grating pulse of the proximity alarm, trying to place how he felt about it. Dust, dirt, a trace of some ancient planet destroyed long ago, hissed across the glass in front of him and was gone again, leaving only a dim red giant hanging in the sky in front of him.

It was old and dying. Once, perhaps on one of these ruined husks of planets that it now almost reached out and touched, beings had looked up to this star's brightness and warmth and felt love and happiness. Once it had served a purpose. Once it had helped people.

 _Like me._

 _Now look at us, old man. We're both worthless, you and me. Worthless and alone._

The cockpit was getting warmer, and the alarm had become faster, a panicked heartbeat that felt like the ship was just starting to realize its pilot's plan.

With hands shaking from adrenaline after his quiet escape from Anakin, Obi Wan had keyed in three random jumps to get away from his former padawan before engaging the drives.

The first one had gone perfectly. He'd come out among a ringed planet and three grey, hazy moons so unimportant they hadn't even been given proper names, according to the random numbers and letters the computer displayed above them along the cockpit glass.

Obi-Wan had stayed just a few seconds before punching the command in again, leaving them drifting in silence once more. He'd done short series of jumps before in his careful escape from civilization, and it was important to keep moving.

But on the second jump, he'd come from dull grey into glowing red, from sterile rock into this oddly mesmerizing scene, his ship drifting toward the bloated, ruddy star and the blackened cinders of planets locked in slow motion around it.

And as he realized which direction he was heading in, his fingers had slid away from the button that would send him on his way to wherever the third jump would take him. He regarded the star thoughtfully, silent, memories of the fight he'd just barely escaped stark signposts in his mind pointing down a path he couldn't bear to follow. _There will be no saving him._

 _I loved him. He was my brother._

The ship continued floating along its standard path, one that would take it far too close to the red giant ahead if the pilot did not continue with the planned jump.

The pilot did nothing. He continued to sit, hands in his lap, the memory of his padawan's hate and rage scraping along his heart. This boy had murdered so many. He would destroy so many more. _All because we took him in. I raised him._

 _I failed him._

Obi-Wan considered the dull, glowing disc. _Maybe… maybe this is what the Force wants. Maybe I have done enough harm in this life._

 _And the Force has brought me here to atone for it._ An image of a young Anakin, of the boy he'd protected and taught and raised, flashed through his mind, and he gave a quiet moan at the pain it brought with it.

 _Damn the Force._

 _Maybe I'm just tired of all of this._

Tears came to his eyes, and he brought up a hand to cover his face, squeezing at his temples, trying to press the pain back down into his mind. The heat in the cockpit was still comfortable. If he didn't open his eyes, and if he continued to ignore the alarms pounding away in his ears, he could pretend it was a lovely afternoon in the Temple gardens.

 _Not for long, though._ His pilot training told him he had roughly another five, possibly ten minutes before the star took away his choice in this matter. The gravity would be too much for a tiny ship like his to escape, and it would welcome him in with slow, smothering arms, filling up the viewscreen with sullen red and blinding him before boiling him alive in the cockpit and melting away all traces of both him and the ship.

He knew he should be disturbed at the thought of dying like that, but he wasn't. Nothing was left behind in the wake of that powerful, sudden grief that had torn through him and then vanished. He kept his eyes closed and tried to find something, some kind of shock or sadness, to account for the tears now streaming down his face.

But there was nothing.

Letting his hand slide back down, he opened his eyes and regarded the star hanging before him like an eclipsed moon.

The controls were a simple movement away. One key to accelerate. One to jump.

He reached out with the Force, trying desperately to feel something, to feel like anything but this old and abandoned star, dying in the dark.

Nothing answered him, and the pain he'd sought surged back, fresh tears streaming down.

"Why? Why did this happen? Why did it all happen?" he shouted hoarsely at the black silhouettes of the planets strung out before him, voice lost in the din of the alarms. "Why?"

The Jedi cursed and slammed his fists against the cockpit controls, once and then again. Something gave a soft chime, a high pitched set of notes that cut through the noise, and he glared at the panel.

He'd accidentally reset the third jump. The new command sat there, a soft green line of numbers hiding whatever planet names would be waiting for him when he arrived. The command to accelerate sat just above it, a simple touch of a button.

Life.

Death.

So close to each other, as they always were. _As they always have been… and does it really matter which one you choose? Does any of this matter?_

With a bitter laugh, he glanced up at the dull mass of the star and then back to the panel, giving himself over to the blackness inside. He shut his eyes. "You know what?" he whispered, voice raw with emotion.

"Let's let the Force decide."

Obi-Wan slammed his fist down.

There was light, too much light even through his closed eyes, and then the alarms were swept into silence by the sudden crash of atmosphere into the ship.

He blinked into new yellow light, taking a second to realize he was now in clouds, hurtling down through them at a speed fast enough it took his breath away.

Alive.

He was still alive.

The ship shook and rattled, thrusting him against the restraints, and the fierce jolts reached down through pain and grief and rational thought to his very core, shaking loose the darkness and leaving only instinct behind as the clouds cleared and the ground below swirled into view.

He grabbed the controls and pulled as hard as he could with one hand, trying to steady out the ship as he furiously jabbed at keys with the other.

This land was a beautiful green plain, a sea of some kind of grass rushing up to meet him, and his animal brain recoiled in horror at the thought of dying smeared across it.

There was no time to think, only act.

He groaned from the effort of pulling back the wings as the ship fell in an awkward slide to the earth below. The once-sleek vessel came in at an angle and with a roar, slamming into the ground hard enough to skip and send Obi-Wan's teeth rattling in his head.

The wings ripped away with a harsh groan and scattered away into the field. What was left of the ship tore up waves of dirt and grass as it slid along and then awkwardly rolled over, tearing the cockpit open before coming to a stop on its side and at the end of a large gash of newly dug soil.

Silence and stillness returned to the world.

Obi-Wan lay there suspended on his side, held only by the restraints to the now horizontal pilot's chair, and breathed in the sharp, tangy odors of cut grass and singed metal. It was some time before he weakly reached up to fumble with the seat's thick straps, and when they gave way he fell with a thud to the soft earth.

Rolling over onto his back, he looked up, dazed, as insects one by one returned to humming in the grass around him.

The sky was a soft, deep blue fading into oranges and reds along one edge of his vision: sunset, then.

Gentle clouds, the same ones he'd shot through just moments ago, hung lazily overhead, painted in large, gorgeous sweeps of lavender and indigo. They drifted along, unconcerned, majestic.

Obi-Wan felt the cool grass, the warm earth, and the fresh scent of the plain clean and bright in his lungs.

This was a beautiful world.

And before he could move beyond simple recognition of that fact to any rational thought, he slipped into the soft black of unconsciousness.


	6. A Visitor

The medical center had been built in the rush of the Clone Wars, all sharp angles and cheap metals that created a subtle sense of unease for most who spent time in it.

The Emperor had always hated this thoughtless array of dull greys and greens. Not for the dark, endless halls, tiny windows, and older model medical droids that patrolled it, but because it had not been built with his vision. _Low-grade Outer Rim-looking trash._

 _Ah, well. One day I'll have it torn down_ , he thought, walking through one of the innermost halls, its blank walls just as ugly as the previous three that had led him here.

 _For now, I have another project to attend to._

He patted the large pouch in his robes, making the final set of turns past neatly matched sets of guards into the private areas for the highest-ranking of the center's patients.

The doors slid aside to reveal two attending droids and his apprentice, whose anguish hung in the air even more heavily than the antiseptic smell of the corridors. It was intoxicating for Sidious, and stronger than he'd expected.

The young man was lying in a plain sickbed, looking out one of the only large windows in the building at the Coruscant night view beyond. Endless streams of cold light, a tumble of fake pearls and diamonds, drifted along in rough lines above, filled with people on their way to and from mostly meaningless events in mostly meaningless lives.

 _But not this one. Oh, no._

It was hard to believe the delicious, pulsing snarl of anger and grief in the room was coming from such a simple source. Just a young man, not the unsure teenager of earlier years, nor the hardened adult he might grow into. And yet the power of his emotions sprang forth, clinging to every corner and surface like a huge, unseen spiderweb. The strands were weak in places, still soft and pliable, but there were fewer and fewer of these spots as the years went on.

Under his hood, Sidious almost smiled.

"Good evening," he said, a courtesy more than anything else as he knew the young man had been able to sense him as well. The Emperor was kind in that way to him: after years of hiding himself so effectively, he continued to do so out of habit with most people. But around his apprentice he let out his own web to climb the walls and ceiling, one that shot out more like the stiff, unforgiving lines of shattered glass.

Vader did not speak, nor did he turn away from the loose streams of light passing across the night sky.

 _I must play this carefully. Having the truth on my side, for once, does not guarantee this will work as I hope._ "I see they have removed you from the bacta tanks. How long did the droid say until you can leave?"

"Does it matter?"

 _Self-pity is the order of the day, I see._ This pleased the Emperor: while he loathed that feeling in himself and had ruthlessly weeded it out of his psyche, he found it quite useful in others. And Vader had so much of it, so much of this particular clay to work with. "Yes, it does."

"Tomorrow, the report says. Today, if I want to."

"And you don't want to?" The old man came to his bedside, taking a seat brought over by one of the attending droids. It withdrew, sinking back into its niche in the wall like a dying beetle, multiple legs and attachments folding in atop each other.

The invisible tangle around them pulsed with anger and sadness even as Vader rigidly kept his face turned to the window. "Does it matter? Does any of this matter?"

"Ah, that is a good question, my apprentice." Sidious paused as if thinking about the answer, even though he could have kept right on going. After he had spent a minute examining the low ceiling, as if in deep thought, he spoke. "The answer is that it matters if you feel it matters."

"I don't feel it does."

"Your empire? It doesn't matter?" _Tread carefully._

"It's not mine. It's yours."

"It is ours. And I am an old man, Anakin." Vader blinked in surprise at his name, at the unexpected sign of affection, but still did not turn to him even though uncertainty stole into the dark cloud that hung around him. Now was the time to play the concerned grandfather. "I will not live forever, you know."

"Maybe I don't want to, either."

The climate control shuddered to life somewhere in the wall, a low rumble of filtered air seeping into the room.

"Do not think I have been blind to your pain, my young one." The Emperor pulled the bag out of his robes and sat it on the narrow strip of plastic that served as a bedside table. There was a soft, dull click as something inside resettled. "I have done my best to protect you, in more ways than you know. And I will help you, in all the ways that I promised."

"Protect me? By sending me out to subdue hostile systems, one after the other?" Vader finally twisted to face him, a flash of anger in his sulphur eyes.

Sidious easily ignored the sarcasm and tone that would have meant instant death for anyone else addressing him. "You need no protection from ships and soldiers. I have told you that before." He began untying the pouch. "You have needed protection from this."

A wave of bitter curiosity washed against the Emperor's mind, and he marveled again at how delightful a fountain of emotion this boy was.

Vader said nothing as Sidious reached into the bag, pulling out a small silver braided cord. It looked almost unreal cupped in his gnarled, discolored hand.

He carefully laid it out on the little table, straightening it as Vader went perfectly still.

Sidious reached in again and brought out a little green and gold bauble, a stone set in golden leaves and berries. It was something frivolous, so out of place in his hand and this room and the medical center. He placed it next to the silver chain.

Neither spoke as the old man looked up to watch the young man's face and all of the fine little muscles and shadows that told more than words ever could. First there was the wide eyes of shock, then the fine lines of puzzlement. And finally, like a fire oh so precisely banked, the tightened jaw of barely-contained rage. _Perfect._

"Where did you get these? These are…"

"Padme's, I know. And I am sorry to say her name, my boy. I truly am. I know it brings you pain. That is why I have tried to protect you. From this." He waved his hand at the pieces of jewelry.

"Where?"

 _Let it build another few moments... ah, there we are._ "I am sad to say that the assassin who attempted to murder you last week was not the first to come bearing one of your wife's possessions."

Vader stared at him.

The man most knew as Palpatine slid the silver braid to one side, as if counting it off. "This one came two years ago. She made it planet-side, but our spies got wind of her and she committed suicide during the chase. Threw herself off of a building, the report says."

He pushed the green jewel over. "This one came roughly six months ago. She made it into the Museum, got herself on a guest list somehow. Fortunately for us, something must have gone wrong for her. One guard came across her and shot her in the middle of her trying to strangle another guard."

Looking up at Vader, he held out his hand. There was no need to ask what he wanted, and the young man numbly reached into the top of his hospital tunic and pulled out a golden hairpin.

Sidious took it and added it to the row: three warm, beautiful pieces on dead, sterile white. "And we both know how this one went."

There was only hurt and confusion swirling around the boy now. The Emperor had expertly removed everything that had cried out against him, like a painting in reverse, leaving only a blank, empty canvas behind. Now it was time to fill it in with his own designs.

"I don't understand," Vader whispered.

"I do. They, these loathsome remnants of the Separatists, want to torment you with her memory. They must have stolen these from her family's home."

"I will murder them. All of them." The flat, toneless words left no room for doubt.

"They deserve to die, there is no question. But you will not be the one to hunt them."

"Why not?!" Rage flared across Sidious's mind, bright and strong.

He took a deep breath, masking his satisfaction as concern. The boy still had plenty of fight left in him. So much potential. "Because I still want to help you. And I cannot if you are dead."

"No one can help me."

"Not now. But have faith in me. I have protected you, have I not? I will help you. Do what I ask, do your training, and give me time."

Vader shook his head in disbelief. "The one thing I want even you cannot help me with, Master."

Sidious opened his mouth and then closed it again. _No. Now is too soon to tell him. Wait. Are you a simpering little child who needs praise? No? Then keep your fool mouth shut._ "There are three more systems that must be pacified sooner rather than later. I will send you to them. You will focus your energies there and practice channeling your emotions as I have instructed you. Maximum force. No weakness. No exceptions."

He watched as Vader reached out to touch the pieces of jewelry lying on the table, stroking each one in turn with a gentle sadness the Sith master found disgusting.

"I… I loved her so much."

Even as he imagined how pleasurable it would have been to murder the little troublemaker girl himself, the Emperor made sure his voice was the quiet, supportive tones of Palpatine rather than Sidious. "I know, my boy." He motioned to the pieces. "Keep these close to you to help you remember and give you focus. When you return, we will talk more. If you have made enough progress, I will show you more."

 _And then, my angry little spider, we will begin to truly unlock your powers._


	7. Night

In the field of green, at the end of the tilled line of earth and debris made by his ship, the man remained unconscious and still. The sun of this world finished its descent, its long, red cloak trailing over the land until there was only darkness and bright stars overhead.

Obi-Wan did not stir at the first night breezes or the faint sound of waves they brought with them. He dreamed of the past.

At first the images were jumbled and random, the end of one so hastily pinned to the beginning of another that colors and sounds and whole objects appeared out of time and place. There was no making sense of anything at first, like a com trying to sort channels out of static.

A pilot's helmet, oddly made of silver, resting on a shelf.

Blue glass shattering on a tile floor, shards of it skittering across geometric designs.

A desert market he'd almost died in, lying in the sand and gasping into his com for help as the distinct scent of the world's allspice filled his lungs.

The eyes of the first lover he'd ever taken, bright and hungry below him.

And then the images started to become scenes.

The Temple. Satine, here a child, tugging on his padawan braid and laughing as they played out in the sun, his dream-memory of this event that never happened as strong as the light overhead.

Darkness. He stood, a young boy, at a festival of some kind he'd never seen in real life, holding what he thought was his mother's hand. But when he looked up, it was a grizzled, smiling clone trooper who smiled back down at him as the soft pop of fireworks lit up the sky all around them. _Cody…_

The fireworks finished their arcs of light and he was even younger, in a room he barely remembered in the waking world, a soft, dark, safe place where he lay wrapped up in a thick green blanket. The walls in the dream were clear, and there were mountains rising up all around them, the soft, worn peaks of one of the first worlds he'd visited as a Jedi knight.

His thoughts drifted toward that mission, and the dream began to change again, the light around him growing brighter until he was in a large ship base built into a mountainside on a beautiful green world. Another real place he had gone on a mission. Another place that was important in his life.

Just as fear began to steal through Obi-Wan, he felt a tug on his sleeve. There, next to him, was a young boy. _Anakin?_ A sense of peace radiated from the child, incredibly powerful, and while Obi-Wan found it hard to look directly at his face, dream logic told him this blinding glow was normal and to be expected. The boy, features hidden in light, hugged him and ran forward, disappearing into the shadows of the bay and his brightness fading away.

Looking around, calm once again, Obi-Wan saw the ships here were all toys, painted wood shapes approximating the Naboo fighters they were supposed to be. He walked through the empty room toward the doors at the end, unafraid. And when they opened to reveal a toy carving of the red and black creature that had so cruelly ended his master's life in the real world, Obi-Wan put his saber directly through its heart.

Just as he had done in the real world.

The boy appeared again at his side, crouching to look at the odd black stain the wooden monster was melting into across the hangar floor. There had been a body, Obi-Wan distantly thought, but reality was hard to think about here, like trying to pick up a piece of ice with warm hands.

The child stood from the fading pool of black and looked up at the Jedi with another broad smile, one that seemed to say everything would be all right now.

 _Oh, Anakin… I wish that were true._ But Obi-Wan had to smile back, even as he had to look away from the power glowing around him. The boy, and the comforting warmth that seemed to surround him, calmed him in a way he hadn't felt in years. It felt like his soul was being smoothed out, one crushed piece at a time.

Obi-Wan tried to look at him again, clearly, but it was like staring into the sun. The boy giggled, as if he sensed what he was doing, and ran off down the hall.

The Jedi ran after him, the walls darkening to blue and then indigo and finally black even as the windows showed bright day outside, and he came out through a door into a starlit sky.

 _I'm awake._

He blinked and rubbed at his eyes as a soft wind ruffled his hair. The dream had ended so crisply, with the door leading out into this place, he half-expected the dream child to be there. But there was no one with him here in this field of grass and stars.

 _No, Anakin has not been that young in a very long time._ The name of his former padawan brought no pain this time, thoughts of him mercifully drifting away in the night breeze for now.

Obi-Wan felt only a hazy curiosity, the peacefulness of the dream still with him.

Sitting up, he took a moment to register the dark shape hunkered down around him as the ship he'd crashed it. It was a solid black arc overhead, covering half the sky above. The other half was just as black, but filled with diamond dust, bright sparks so plentiful he had to just sit and look at them.

 _You never see this many on Coruscant._ A soft smile, hidden in the dark, crossed Obi-Wan's face and then tears welled up as the memories of the last few hours came crashing back as he remembered how he'd come to be here, sitting on dirt still warm from sunlight and feeling a lush breeze on his face.

 _I could have died. I was going to kill myself._

The bloated red sun swam across his vision, horrible and dying. He had been going to fling himself into that hellscape, so twisted with grief he had been willing to die in one of the most painful ways possible for a star pilot.

It was like thinking of another person entirely, a twin who looks like you but does something you never would. Obi-Wan felt repelled to his very core at the memory of randomly slamming his hand down on the console.

 _No. No. All the masters, what… What was I thinking?_

He rolled over onto his hands and knees and carefully stood, holding onto the wreckage to steady himself. His body sang to him of bruises and cuts, lovely notes that told him he was alive.

That simple fact, clear and bright, beat back the anguish of his recent years as easily as a saber cutting through metal.

 _I am still here._

Leaning against the curve of the ship with a grunt of pain, he considered those words as he took his first real look at the planet he'd landed on.

This new world stretched out before him, a sea of grass that dropped off far in the distance before spreading out in the soft darkness of what must be an ocean all around him. Other plateaus like the one he'd crashed on rose up in strong shadows off in the distance: blocky, massive islands worn flat at the top of their peaks. A moon hung low in the sky over one, a hint of white and silver occasionally hidden by the large, lazy clouds he'd seen earlier.

Obi-Wan tightened his grip on the wreckage as he sat back down as carefully as he could.

After all of his mistakes, all of his foolishness, there was still some purpose left in his life. _There must be. Or I wouldn't be here right now._

 _I would be dead._

He leaned back against the cool metal of the ship and scrubbed at his tears, looking once again at the lovely pastoral scene before him. The tangy scent of the grass, the stark lines of the islands, the distant sound of waves: every detail was beautiful to him, fresh and new. Obi-Wan sat in silence as the little moon climbed higher in the sky, taking in everything around him with the awe of a man who now understood how precious it all was.

He had no plans, no ship, and possibly no company on this world. But it didn't matter. He was alive. And that was enough.

 _I swear to you, Master, I will never doubt the Force again. Let it take me where it will._


	8. Dawn

Weeks after his former master first sat dazed, lost in the sea of stars rising all around him on a beautiful world, Anakin examined a different type of firmament in the sterile confines of a darkened room. It was a scatter of points of light on a holomap, each bright little circle another clutch of soldiers, weapons, or defenses far below, scattered around what passed for a capital city on this backward planet.

His job was to wipe each and every little star out, to bring a total and endless night to the odd little sky laid out on the table before him. The orders were simple: leave the capital city as intact as possible for the future Empire base that would be built there while eliminating all resistance presented. It was a lovely, simple diversion from the… _troubles…_ he'd had of late.

 _You think you've escaped, old man, but I'm just taking some time to train. Just as you always taught me to do. I can wait. I can wait as long as I need to._

He pushed those thoughts aside and took a deep breath in order to carefully and completely consider the problem of this little world, this foolish place that had not seen the wisdom in remaining a part of his empire. His fine profile glowed, gilded blue and sharp in the darkness around him, as the commander described the current situation.

"The populace is a largely peaceful one without many trained soldiers, and we've done well with the smaller cities, but the capital city is ringed with well-defended artillery installations at regular intervals and dangerous fauna in the surrounding area. The artillery, huge gun turrets, have held off our air attacks and fauna our ground ones. Our three previous attempts have resulted in heavy casualties on our side in both air and ground forces."

Anakin looked over at him and tried to remember if this particular clone trooper had told him his name or not. It was strange for him not to call them by the names they'd picked up during this long, long war and old habits died hard.

The man swallowed and stood a little straighter, mistaking his wondering for judgement. "I didn't lead any of those attempts, sir. That's, uh, why I'm here now."

Anakin waved his hand at him dismissively, looking down at the map. He studied it in silence for a time, and then began speaking quietly, almost to himself, as he worked through the plan. "How dangerous are these animals outside of the city that are attacking your men?"

"They are very large lizard-like things, sir. I've seen them eat men whole. Fast, too. We can't mount any infantry attacks on the walls or even set up artillery positions before they show up."

"How long can a squad hold them off?"

"During the day, an hour. At night ten minutes at best once they get our scent. The city scanner tech makes it impossible to drop in close with small groups of men in landing ships without them being blown out of the sky by the towers, so we've tried landing further out and advancing in on foot, but it hasn't, uh, gone well with the animals I mentioned."

The lord tapped the edges of the map, and a red circle swam into view over the city, extending out further than its walls like a strange moat. The readings along the side of the map told him what he needed to know: the ionization from any speeders, ships, or even booster packs would bring a swift and fatal response. The forest came up almost to the walls themselves, but there was a decent ring of flat land between the two where any guard with a pair of eyes would be able to see approaching enemies.

The ruddy halo taunted him, a lovely little challenge that no one had been able to beat. Yet.

Anakin gave a crooked grin, the expression sharp and cruel in the dark. "I think I can do a little better than you have. I want ten of your best men. Ones that have experience doing low-tech drops."

"Ah… only ten, sir? And low-tech? You mean parachutes?"

"Yes. No boosters, no guidance, and only ten men, who I will prep tonight on my own."

The Commander looked at the angry red on the map and back at him, puzzled. "Sir, with all respect, how close do you intend to land? Barring whatever you have planned for after the landing, if you drop in the woods, those creatures will be on you before you know it. If you miss and drop in that strip of flat land in front of the city walls, the gunners will have you in a second."

Anakin chuckled, his disconcerting yellow eyes sliding up to the clone trooper. "What, that doesn't sound like fun to you?"

"I… ah…"

"You worry too much, Commander. I only need about twenty minutes on the ground for my plan to work." Anakin knew he should be harsher with the man, that Palpatine would call it weakness, but he had fought alongside so many soldiers with the commander's voice and face it was hard not to feel a solidarity with them. They were, in truth, the only brothers he had left. "I will not waste your men's lives."

He tapped the red circle off, leaving the curving lines of the ghostly blue city, and added markers to several different buildings inside. "Have the rest of the attack ships and men prep tonight for a full overrun of the city at…" he paused to check a data dial hovering above the table, "0700, as soon as the sun is up: drop ships inside the city walls at these points and door-to-door fighting until the locals are subdued. Tell them I'll be right there fighting with them as soon as we can make it inside."

The commander looked at the map and back at him, face carefully blank. "Yes, sir."

The men were brought to him, another group of strangers with a familiar face, another set of unbelievers quietly convinced he was taking them on a suicide mission but none daring to say such a thing to his face even as he promised them victory. "I always win, gentlemen." They nodded politely even as they doubted him, but he was too excited for the coming battle to care.

He did wonder, as he sat down to meditate later, if he should be proud of their obedience or annoyed at their weakness. _Were they all this timid back in the day?_

It didn't matter. He'd take this city, just as he had all the others before it. Let the brave ones live along with him. Let the weak die.

* * *

When the drop-door slammed open, revealing a night sky awash in drifts of moonlit clouds and the first grey glimmerings of dawn, Anakin grinned at the gust of wind that ripped through his hair and tightened his grip on the cord strung overhead along the cabin. The land below was the uneven black of a forest, and the lights of the city glowed faintly somewhere ahead.

The ten men he'd requested were lined up behind him, silently waiting as the ship rattled with the groan of the engines course-correcting for the wind now battering them.

"Now!" he barked through his com, jumping out into the empty embrace of the sky. A heady thrill shot through him as he fell, speeding like a rock toward the hard earth far, far, below.

 _Your end is here._ It was hard not to laugh into the wind even as it fought with him to steal his breath away, rolling in the intoxicating power of his emotions. Confidence. Bloodlust. All of the things he'd meditated on carefully for the last several hours, blocking out all thoughts of previous failures with Obi-Wan and the assassination attempts, and turning the few that slipped through anyway toward his own cause as he folded frustration and rage into the mix.

Now he fell to earth, a wingless angel of death for any who would oppose him.

 _Anakin Skywalker is here._

He was never Vader in his own mind in moments like this. When the song of battle coursed through him, he was always Anakin.

And he was here to make this planet pay for its defiance.

He spun, finding his balance, and watched the other men trail out behind him, tiny dots strung along an invisible line in the blackness. Their chutes opened just as his did, a rough jerk on his shoulders and stomach, and then he was drifting in the night wind the ship's sensors had promised would be there. They moved quietly through the night, poison drifting on the breeze, toward the eastern wall of the city.

After a few minutes, the dark spires of their target rising up ahead like a small hill, Anakin felt a dim tug on the Force. It came from a few unseen creatures below, loping through the forest at the same pace as the chutes. They were large, and they had spotted him. He could almost feel them looking up at him.

He grinned down into the night and tapped the goggles he wore, turning on the com. "We drop in ten seconds. Three hostiles closing. I'll handle them while the rest of you land." He yanked the goggles down and snapped them into place on the chest of the flight suit he wore.

The trees were just below him now, gently swaying in the breeze, and he felt and then saw one of the creatures slam into the trunk of a larger one and skitter up it to the canopy. It reared its huge, angular head, teeth glistening in the moonlight, and waited for Anakin to drift directly into it.

In one smooth motion, Anakin drew and slashed his saber across his chute's cords, falling forward and dropping down into the tree's branches even as the beast snapped its large mouth onto Anakin's chute. He spun against the trunk, slamming his saber back into place on his hip, and climbed up the back of the beast even as the thing shook its head, trying to tear through the soft fabric of the chute.

It gave a roar and tried to shake him off, but Anakin growled and climbed in rough jumps up its back, gloved hands tight on the thick horns and scales growing along its spine.

The men slowly drifting in were still too far away they couldn't make out much of what they saw, but the end of this battle was clear: the red line of a saber lit and slashed across the writhing thing waiting for them at the top of a tree.

Anakin jumped away and caught himself on the branches of another tree as the dead lizard crashed to the ground, a sharp and acrid smell thick in the air.

The other two beasts were catching up quickly, having slowed to follow the scent of the men still drifting above. They were almost within sight of the city walls now, he saw as he jerked his head back to look over his shoulder. The men would land just inside the forest, safe from sight of the city gunners if the animals didn't flush them out after they landed.

Jumping from tree to tree, working his way down, Anakin ran as fast as he could in the dark, counting on the Force to guide his steps. He slipped once, boot scraping rough bark, but managed to roll out of it down to the next branch.

The two beasts, bulky shadows up ahead, slowed at this new intruder trying to flank them and stopped for a moment, as if conferring, while his men drifted overhead. They were behind him now, these creatures in front.

 _Come on. Come on!_ He drew his saber, breath hard in his lungs and body tense, excited and afraid at the same time as he stood alone in a pool of red light in the blackness of the trees. _It makes me strong. All of my emotions bring me strength._

 _They make me invincible._

One of the lizards gave a loud, piercing cry, almost like a bird, and then they both charged at him, crashing through the forest.

He leaped to the side of the first and whipped his hand out, sending a wave of the Force to slam its head into a thick tree trunk. The second one scrambled over its dazed brother, pointed snout just a black shape in the night but its angry hissing as loud as a swarm of locusts, and Anakin jumped just in time to land on its back. The Force lifted him in another jump back to the first animal, where he cleanly impaled it through the head all the way up to the saber hilt.

His second opponent crashed into a thick line of trees, unable to stop its own momentum, and when it tried to draw its head back out Anakin was there again, stabbing his blade down with a savage glee.

The men were landing now, some of them having seen a bit of what was going on, others too busy trying not to get caught in the trees to notice.

He hopped down from the serpentine body, now just a pile of motionless flesh, and tapped his com. "We're in. Move half a klick in toward the target, assuming a defensive ring position around me as we go."

"Yes, sir," came the chorus of replies as the last of the men disentangled themselves from their chutes.

Anakin walked along through the trees, nodding to the shadows who joined up with him as he went. "As we talked, I need ten minutes. Keep those things off me. I think one might have called out to others, but I don't sense any coming just yet."

They walked through the woods, Anakin unzipping the top half of his flightsuit. He reached inside to the shirt he wore, to two small items tucked into one pocket. His fingers wrapped around a small pebble, a memento of the last time he'd seen his former master, and then moved to clutch the small, cold jewel that had once been Padme's.

He hesitated before choosing, and as they came to a stop inside the tree line, no one saw what he took out of his shirt.

The men were standing and kneeling in a ring around him, silent in the predawn grey of the woods, the rustle of leaves overhead loud in their ears.

Lord Vader was still, eyes closed, for an uncomfortably long span of minutes as the dim skies above began to blush pink with the coming dawn. A few of the men dared glimpses over their shoulders at him, but he was motionless, and they started to wonder what insane death the famed warrior had planned for all of them.

And then a harsh groan from ahead got all of their attention. They whirled, expecting one of the lizard things to be on them, tearing and ripping, but nothing was there. Only trees and shadows and the faint smell of earth.

It took a moment to realize where the sound was coming from.

Far up above, past the lacy shadows of the trees, one of the huge gun turrets was slowly swiveling to point in toward the others that ringed the city, its immense cannon lowering to shoot almost directly across rather than up into the sky.

The squad leader lowered his gun and turned to look back at Anakin, stunned, before waving the rest of them back into their defensive positions.

The lord was glaring up at the tower, one hand raised while the other stayed clenched at his side, gritting his teeth but a dark, evil pleasure in his eyes. It was impossible to reconcile in the mind, but it seemed like the massive gun towering overhead was following the movement of the Lord's hand.

The monster of a machine jerked to a rough halt, and fired, lighting up its grey silhouette with an intense pulse of light. Once. Then it turned like a man possessed and fired again. And again. Each deafening shot was perfectly timed to the faintest of movements of the Lord Vader's hand, like a conductor leading an orchestra of one.

The other gun turrets exploded in the distance, unseen but the fierce blasts felt as small earthquakes out in the forest. A few leaves shook loose from overhead, spinning softly down around the soldiers.

They held their position, watching the trees for further attacks, but the growing destruction behind them frightened every creature in the forest away, the power radiating off of this strange man in violent waves almost sending a few of the men running off themselves.

Death began to rain down from the air attack now fully possible and almost painfully easy as the troopers, one by one, turned to look at the man standing in the middle of them as their coms crackled with the fight overhead.

The young man caught the squad leader's eye, and smiled at him with a cold, terrifying serenity even as the massive tower above ground to a halt and powered down, pointing down into the city itself and the troops now landing there en masse.

Above the roar of fire and ship engines, he said, almost too quietly to hear, "I told you. I always win."


	9. Change

The life and pride of a Jedi, a lightsaber could do a lot of things. Dispatch enemies, cut open doors, short out alarm boxes, work as a flashlight, or just generally intimidate when the situation called for it.

Hunt small game? Not so much.

Obi-Wan sighed and sat down in the grass, his weapon hanging unlit and useless at his side as he watched the third furry beast of the day bound off though the green. He laughed even as he wished for once in his life for the convenience of a crude, uncivilized blaster.

Sneaking up on these little creatures certainly wasn't working, and they darted off before he could even attempt any kind of Force hypnotism.

He groaned and lay back among the soft earth, imagining how nice some roasted meat would taste. _I could try just throwing my saber at them? Using it like a club? Boomerang?_ His chuckle rose into the afternoon sky, a warm stretch of blue and clouds that promised another evening of beautiful weather.

Most of the rations he'd kept stockpiled on the fighter had survived the wreck, though it'd taken two days to find them, sweeping his hands gently through the waist-high fronds as he walked in growing circles around the impact trail of the ship. He'd also found a small spring this way, bubbling quietly behind a screen of somewhat taller, bamboo-like plants.

So starving was not an issue and would not be for a long time, but Obi-Wan was certainly ready for a break from reconstituted stew and freeze-dried vegetables. For the last week he had even made food the topic of his morning meditation, choosing one of his favorite dishes that calmed him and imagining it in every possible detail.

This, and recurring dreams of the child made of light- _little Anakin, of so long ago-_ had soothed and helped him through his first weeks on this world. They had kept him steady when, despite the peace and beauty all around him, guilt and regret came to stalk him in the small hours of the morning.

Those two feelings still followed Obi-Wan, wolves that would never quite give up his scent, but they now hung far back enough they no longer flanked his every move.

Today, this morning's meditation focus had been a particular type of Alderaanian flatbread he'd once had during a mission there, a gorgeously light and flaky circle of bread dipped in a sweet, bright orange honey and sprinkled with a type of mint.

With nothing in particular to do and nowhere to go, Obi-Wan had been able to spend quite a while on imagining the dish: the deep brown of the flatbread crust, fading into gold and then white, the rich scent of the honey and the tiny jewels of green leaves floating in the amber. The softness of the bread and the light, sweet aftertaste it left.

Now, lying in the sweet-smelling grass and watching clouds drift by in the afternoon sky, he stretched and enjoyed the sun on his face, trying to decide if he would go work on taking pieces off of the fighter. It was a hard, tedious job with the simple tools he had, but every piece he removed he could use for the shelter he was slowly transforming the wreckage into.

His days had become simple, almost absurdly so. Sleep, eat, meditate, explore or attempt to hunt, work on the shelter, eat, watch the stars, sleep. His wardrobe was down to an open tunic and pants, his robes once again packed away, but his saber stayed on his hip since the local little furry beasts and their friends couldn't exactly report him to the Imperials for being a Jedi. He could practice his forms all he wanted in this beautiful place without fear of being heard or seen, the comforting weight of his blade right there as it had been for so many years before all of this began.

In this way, the Force had been kind to him, he'd decided shortly after arriving.

True, there was no way to fix the fighter, and no settlements could be seen anywhere around him on his island or the others in view. How long he might be here and the implications of that, he had decided not to think too deeply about just yet. But he was grateful at the same time for his unintentional exile in this place. With no way off of this planet and no possible way to help, it was much easier for his mind to temporarily let go of his duties, to make a much needed retreat from the horrors that had driven him here.

The only thought currently on his mind was how he would spend the rest of his day.

 _Work on the shelter, lazy. Come on._ Sighing, Obi-Wan stood and walked back toward the wreckage, the tallest silhouette in the field that spread out before him. A few low rock piles stood in the grass here and there in the distance, but his ship was certainly the tallest landmark in view.

And it was the wrong shape.

Obi-Wan paused, bringing his hand up to shield his eyes and look again. He'd removed the remains of the engine shielding, a twisted piece of metal over half the size of a man sticking straight up off of the wreckage, a week ago.

Now it looked like the shielding was back atop the wreckage, a simple silhouette from this distance that had no business being there.

He frowned at it, blue eyes narrowed. "What the…"

It moved.

It was there and suddenly gone, disappearing down behind the pile of metal. Obi-Wan jumped back, saber lit before he even realized he'd done it. Startled, he shut it off and clipped it back onto his belt.

Someone, or something, had been standing on top of his ship. Watching him.

"Wait!" he called out as he ran back, a constant low tide of green fronds slapping against his legs. Without slowing, he jumped and ran up the side of the wreckage, skidding to a halt atop it and whirling to look for the person he'd seen.

No one was there. No man, local equivalent of a man, not even a wild animal.

Nothing.

"What?" he whispered, bewildered, as he studied the green plain around him and the utter lack of places to hide. The Force pounded in his mind, bright and clear as the sun overhead, his battle instincts returning in a second like a forgotten book suddenly opened.

The person was close. Impossibly close.

 _I brought you something._

He spun, lighting his saber and dropping it in a defensive line across his body in one smooth motion even as his heart started to pound. Whoever this was had spoken to him through the Force but he couldn't see him. There was nowhere to hide out here. Where in all the Sith hells were they?

 _Don't be scared. I'm right here._

He sighted down past the bright blue line of his saber to the ground below.

The dream child stood there, without the warm glow that had wreathed him before but the same little boy all the same. No more than four or five years old, all smiles and a wrapped piece of food in his small hands.

The edge of it stuck out from the cloth, white and cream against a dark brown, as he held it up toward the man towering above him on the ship. "It's flatbread! Not fancy stuff and we don't have honey, but it's pretty good. I asked Kalei to make some after I heard you thinking about it really loud."

Obi-Wan lowered his weapon and shut it off, speechless as the blade hissed out of sight. The child grinned up at him from under a mop of blond hair, his eyes the faded blue of a late autumn sky and familiar in a way the Jedi couldn't quite place. "We can share!"

"Where did you come from?"

"The caves. They're down on the cliffs. We can see the sea and it's really pretty at night."

"I see," Obi-Wan said, hooking his saber back onto his hip as he continued to stare at the boy. "I, ah, haven't been down the cliffs yet. Didn't know there was a way down." _Have I lost my mind?_

"It's ok. What's your name?"

"Obi-Wan Kenobi..." he answered faintly, wondering if this was somehow another dream as he climbed down to kneel in front of the boy and take the wrapped food from him. It was cool and heavy in Obi-Wan's hand, the cloth rough against his palm and the scent of freshly baked bread rising up to him.

This was not a dream.

"What's _your_ name, child?"

The boy stood tall, flush with the pride of all young children who are about to answer a question about themselves. "Luke. Luke Skywalker."


	10. A Gift

Anakin strode down the impossibly long hall that marked the way to the Emperor's private throne room, boots clicking and formal cloak billowing behind him. If a message from Palpatine summoned him, he went to a stately suite of rooms high above Coruscant, lush and sophisticated and meant for entertaining the highest level of guests.

If a message from Sidious summoned him, he came here.

The corridor was a grand expanse of bare stone and metal designed to make anyone feel tiny and ill at ease as they traversed it, even someone of Anakin's height and presence. Despite its modern lines and the almost garish lighting overhead, the empty space felt like a tomb long undisturbed and best left that way.

The guards that stood every ten meters saluted, eyes straight ahead as he walked by. In a sign of how much fear he himself inspired, none dared to look after him after he passed.

Anakin felt restless, irritable. Fighting was good. War, campaigns, battles: those things kept him occupied. But recently, in the silence that fell between, he found his mind turning more and more to Obi-Wan, and he itched to get back to pursuing the last walking shadow of his former life.

 _Finding him and killing him._

 _Well, maybe_. That had been the plan following Mustafar, but his rage had cooled into something icier since Obi-Wan had slipped through his fingers back on that abandoned ship. Anakin didn't know what the plan was becoming, exactly, but he knew he no longer wanted to simply murder his former master.

 _Capture him. Make him suffer for his betrayal. For bringing Padme to Mustafar when I was out of control. For turning against me when I needed him most._

 _For not joining me… ?_ The idea drifted through his mind, as strange and mysterious as the rare glimmers in hyperspace old-timer pilots talked about.

Anakin pushed the thought away, puzzled and wondering where it had come from. _I don't want him to join me! Weak old fool!_

The doors to the throne room now loomed above him, twice as tall as he was and flanked by two of the familiar red shadows that were his master's personal guards. The chamber lay briefly lit and then sank back into a pale gloom as he stepped inside, the doors closing behind him with a heavy, final thud.

The room's menacing atmosphere flowed over him, welcoming him as it always did with cool, dank air and the subtle promise of violence. Few outsiders saw this true throne room of Darth Sidious, of the man they knew as Emperor Palpatine, and usually only those who were about to die.

There were no windows, only long, narrow cuts in the stone of one wall that let in the murky dimness of the undercity levels. Anakin had once estimated they were hundreds of levels below sunlight, far below where he would normally venture in Coruscant's seedy underworld if given a choice.

This was another good idea of his master's, he had admitted to himself on previous visits: the building itself was surrounded by empty air on all sides for hundreds of meters and virtually impenetrable, the basement level where Anakin now stood impossibly deep in the planet's underworld. Uninvited guests, unable to use the secured elevator he had taken, would have to go through the horrors that walked and crawled along the sublevels' darkened passages to reach this place.

None had ever made it.

The far wall, the one he looked up to now, was a massive and simple black screen that always glowed with the bright dots of inhabited systems. Most of them glittered red, and he was pleased to note the addition of the three he had turned the tide for.

Sidious stood beneath this grand display, looking up at it with his gnarled hands clasped behind his back. "Good evening, Lord Vader," he said without turning, considering the sprawl of lights above him.

"Good evening, Master." Anakin walked over to join him at the map, stopping and once again counting off the newest three stars. _I did that._ Pride rose inside, shaking loose some of his uneasiness. _My empire grows._

He glanced at Sidious, the ugliness of the old man's face hidden in the dimness of the room, and reluctantly corrected himself. _Our empire._

 _For now._

"You did well, my apprentice. And as I have promised, I will now share something with you. You have clearly progressed to a level where you will be capable of dealing with it." Sidious smiled at Anakin's curious expression, the old man's scars twitching.

He turned to walk back to a small dais in the center of the chamber and his throne atop it, a bulky thing inlaid with stonework that Anakin was sure came from some Sith monument or possibly even Korriban itself.

It felt wrong to look directly at the throne because of those unnatural carvings, which was undoubtedly the point: when someone was brought here before Sidious, he wanted them to squirm and grovel before they died. He wanted them to be afraid.

As the Emperor climbed the low steps to the throne, Anakin kept his mental guard in place and did not look away, even as he wanted to turn his eyes down or away or even up to the ceiling. He did this every time he had an audience here with his master.

It was not suitable for him to be afraid. He loathed being afraid.

Sidious turned and sat down, brushing a bit of something off of his robes and looking up to chuckle at Anakin, the sound dying away quickly in the damp air.

"Master?"

"Such a stubborn man you are, and yet, that is part of your strength." He sighed, content, and reclined into the throne as if it were stuffed with the finest pillows. "Have I ever told you the story of these sculptures?" He tapped one arm of the throne fondly, that side a rough outline of sharp angles and disconcerting shadows. The other side was worn away to near perfect smoothness, but the ridges and rounded edges always seemed to suggest faces if the light caught them right.

"No, Master." 

"Well, they relate to what we are to talk about, so I shall tell you." He tapped the arm again. "This stone was taken from an ancient battleground in a system almost no one remembers. Sith, in the glorious days of the armies of our people, sacrificed Jedi atop it to celebrate their victory. For days after the battle it ran red with their blood, until there were no prisoners left."

Anticipating Anakin's question, he smiled and stroked the dark carved ridges like a favorite pet. "The souls left inside told me of this when I found it, though I fear in their insanity they are not always the most coherent storytellers. But I do love to hear them when I can get them to speak."

Somewhere outside and down below in the mist, a corridor ghoul howled, its unearthly cry echoing through the dark canyons that surrounded them.

"And the other?" Anakin asked, determined not to look away.

Sidious drew a long, thin finger along the weathered stone. "I believe this one may come from one of the first Sith temples. It is so powerful, and so ancient, I have only touched minds with it once. I think it would kill a man to do so for longer than a few seconds."

Something inside the worn block whispered to Anakin, as if it had stirred at Sidious's touch. _Death,_ it hissed, less a word than a long, excruciating promise of pain and madness slipping through the back of Anakin's mind and down into his gut. He gritted his teeth, gaze sliding away for just a second, bringing another laugh from his master.

"Don't be embarrassed, my apprentice. Not everyone can be as powerful as I am. Now," he continued, "come closer and see what I have for you. There are powers other than fear that can be useful."

Anakin reluctantly approached the dais and took a few steps up as Sidious waved a hand, using the Force to open a small box on a table that sat next to the throne. "For you."

A small object floated down to him, and he frowned as it dropped into his hand. "What is this?" It was glossy and smooth, some type of polished oval stone that almost blended into the black leather of his glove. Three rough, jagged lines were etched into it, almost invisible in the gloom of the chamber unless held just right. It felt powerful, but more like a searing fire than the dead ice of the throne. He closed his hand over it and looked up at Sidious as the old man shut the box with a click.

"It is an old talisman of sorts, one I have used in the past. I give it to you now that you are capable of using it, Anakin. My only wish for you is to grow in your power, to bring glory to yourself and the Sith."

"Thank you, Master." He examined it, holding it up, unable to get any kind of sense from it beyond a strange, ravenous hunger. Like a fire, it wanted to eat, for lack of a better word. Anakin had the feeling it would try to eat him if it weren't somehow afraid of him. "What does it do?"

"I believe it was used, long ago, to reanimate enemy corpses for war and send them back into battle against their own side. An excellent demoralization technique, I must say."

Anakin let this explanation flow past him, willing himself not to flinch or show any reaction to this gruesome information. He believed in power, in strength and in victory. He had no desire to step off of those well-established paths of his Sith apprenticeship into the deeper shadows his master wandered in.

"I am a weapon, not a witch, my Master. You know this. How will I use this?"

Sidious was watching him from the darkness of his cowl, assessing him as he so frequently did. Anakin wondered, not for the first time, if the older Sith found him lacking. "The primary manipulation of the Force in this talisman is to seek out Force-sensitive beings, or their remains, and bind them. Especially Jedi."

The Emperor closed his eyes with a sigh, recalling some pleasant memory Anakin had no desire to know about. "While the binding aspect has been lost over the millennia and some of its power has faded, I have found that if one has strong enough feelings about a particular Jedi, this little stone can help you locate them."

 _Obi-Wan._

As if reading his mind, Sidious grinned, wrinkled face splitting into a cruel, ugly smile. "Your old master, I was thinking."

"I…"

"I know you've been chasing Kenobi between campaigns. And I encourage it," he said, waving his hand dismissively at Anakin's surprise. "Oh, my apprentice, I know everything you do. It's a sign of how long you have to go before you can one day challenge me."

The great and terrible Lord Vader stood there sheepishly, hands in fists at his side as his humiliation warred with his eagerness. _He knew?! I… it… it doesn't matter. At all. What matters is that I can find Obi-Wan now. And with this that bastard will never be able to escape me again._

The stone hummed in his hand, sending strange feelings of heat and anxiety through his racing mind. Sidious tilted his head, hood shifting, as if he could hear it.

"I think it's working, Master."

"It is responding to your power, which you have built so much these past few years. Go. Meditate with it, my boy. And enjoy your hunt. Let all of your hatred for him burn through you." The Emperor patted the lines of stonework his arm rested on. "Find him. Bring him here. We will make him suffer."

Sidious let the last word linger in the damp gloom: it stirred Anakin's blood with its horrible, limitless potential. He did not know exactly how he would make Obi-Wan Kenobi pay, but he would pay, as he deserved to. _I will have my revenge._

He bowed and left in a swirl of black, the stone's heat growing against his gloved palm.


	11. Jewelry Box

Obi-Wan sat down hard on the grass, the day suddenly too bright and too hot and the name he'd heard dancing in his mind like a mirage. _It can't be. There must be another family with that name._ "Luke Skywalker?" He tried to smile at the young boy, who sat down with him and was unwrapping the flatbread he'd brought with them. "Who are your parents, Luke?"

"Well, my mama has a bunch of names. There's Ladyship and Grace and other stuff, too. That's what my aunties call her. But her real name is Padme." He tore the white circle in two and held a piece out to Obi-Wan, stuffing the other into his mouth.

Obi-Wan took it absent-mindedly, not even realizing he'd done so. "Where is your mother?" The Jedi's heart stopped, the entire world frozen and held in a young pair of blue eyes while the boy considered his question as he chewed on the bread.

Luke swallowed and tore off another piece, unaware of how hellishly long the wait felt to Obi-Wan. "Right now? She's home, in the cave. Sometimes she's at the beach but I think she's in the cave because the waves are really high today and sometimes she doesn't like getting splashed. When she's walking."

Tears welled up in Obi-Wan's eyes. _She's alive. Right here. Alive._ "And, and your father, Luke? Who is he?"

"My papa is Anakin Skywalker." Luke took a bite of bread, puzzled by the gentle sob that escaped Obi-Wan's throat, and reached over to pat the man's knee comfortingly. "Did my papa hurt you too? He hurt Mama."

 _Padme is alive. And the little child I thought gone forever. Here he is, so much like his father it almost hurts to look at him._

Obi-Wan brushed his eyes and squeezed Luke's hand, desperately fighting the urge to pick the boy up and run back to see the friend he'd thought long dead.

"You shouldn't be talking to him."

Startled, Obi-Wan looked past the boy to see a small girl Luke's age peering out from the grass. It took only a glance at her dark eyes and serious scowl to place her in this wondrous scene, to see the intelligent eyes of her mother and angry pout of her father. "Hello, child," he murmured, lost in utter delight at the way she frowned at him. _She's just like Anakin. There are two of them. Twins._

"Leia, it's ok! He's nice!"

"Mama would be mad if she knew someone was here."

"He's a Jedi. Like Papa was."

"He doesn't look like a Jedi."

"I knew- I know your mother," Obi-Wan said, finally remembering the bread and offering it to the little girl named Leia.

"You do?" She considered the food, glancing over to see Luke noisily finishing off his piece, and finally took it. "Thank you," she said with some effort as Luke stood up to brush the crumbs off his pants.

"Do you think I might be able to see your mother? It's been a long, long time since she and I have seen each other." Hope burned inside him for the first time in years, so brightly it almost hurt. Perhaps life was not just one endless font of despair. Perhaps something good had survived and flourished in the ruins of his past world, in spite of all of the pain and torment that had razed his spirit to the ground.

 _You always were so strong, Padme. I never blamed Anakin for falling in love with you._

Luke and Leia exchanged glances. "Is she busy with writing stuff?" the boy asked, a little hesitant.

"No, she was reading."

"Then it's ok."

"Yeah."

Obi-Wan was entranced by every small thing they did, but even in the midst of his amazement he heard a slight edge of unease in their voices. He forgot about it, however, as Luke tugged on his sleeve, pulling him to his feet. "Come on! I'll show you the way down."

Leia fell in beside them as they began to walk toward the distant cliff, the edge of the grassy plateau. "You can only get up here and back down again with the Force. Can you do that?" she asked, challenging Obi-Wan with her chin lifted high in the air. "I can do it. All the time."

Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a passing impersonation of an impressed person. He hadn't spent a lot of time with other people, let alone children, in a long time. "Oh, you must be very powerful." The Jedi wasn't exactly lying: the Force floated in just as striking a halo around her as it did her brother.

She seemed pleased with this answer and gave Obi-Wan the first smile of many. "I am." She drifted over and took Luke's hand in hers as they walked along. "Luke and I can float ten pebbles at once."

 _Padme was a genius for bringing them out somewhere like here. Any closer to civilization and word would have gotten around so fast the Imperials would have found them in a month. Maybe less._

They walked along for a good while, Obi-Wan mostly listening to Luke describe all of the foods Obi-Wan had mediated on to Leia, with the Jedi offering gentle explanations and corrections as needed. They were on the topic of Akitan rice-pot-stew, his ship now a tiny dot on the horizon behind them, when the waves of soft grass gave way to crisp sea air and the ocean swelling into view ahead.

Obi-Wan shielded his gaze with his hand and studied the bright, vibrant stretch of waves and glittering reflections far below. "How do we get down?"

Luke and Leia grinned at him and hurried ahead to crouch near the edge of the cliff, closer than the adult would have liked but clearly something they had done a hundred times. Obi-Wan watched, feeling their energies mix into one strong cloud of the Force, and then Luke slid down out of sight.

"Luke?" he called out, rushing to the spot he'd just been in.

Leia giggled and pointed: a small hole, a soft gap in limestone just large enough for a person or two to squeeze through, lay atop the cliff like a strange well, angling steeply down into the ground beneath them. "It's like a cave or tunnel kinda but it goes down all the way to the beach. You have to push up with the Force to slow you down. And don't fall down because it's kinda steep. And when you want to climb back up you have to push up with the Force to get you to all the parts you can hold with your hands," she explained, finishing with an openly concerned look at the Jedi. "Are you gonna be ok? You're old."

"Do I look that bad, my dear?" Obi-Wan chuckled, a sudden memory of life as an Initiate coming back to him, a secret game where they would take turns daring each other to sneak out of their rooms at night to leave handmade flimsiplast crowns on the heads of the tallest and most elaborate statues that dotted the Temple grounds. It took a mixture of natural climbing skill and judicious Force pushes for such young ones to pull that stunt off, and Obi-Wan had been particularly good at it.

His happy reminiscence mixed with her own excitement, and as one they turned to lean over the hole while Leia gestured down into it. "Ok, so you slide down here and then land on this part in the middle and there's a fork. Keep sliding down left. But not yet! Wait a minute and then come down after me."

"All right. See you soon, my dear."

She giggled up at him and was gone, sliding down out of sight. He laughed to himself, stunned and still somewhat in disbelief at the turn the day had taken, and waited the recommended amount of time before carefully easing himself down into the cave.

 _This looks to be more fun than air ducts. That's for sure._

* * *

A somewhat bumpy ride later, but no worse for the wear, Obi-Wan stepped out of a natural grotto in the cliffside, brushing off his tunic and pants, instinctively patting his lightsaber to make sure it was still there. The sound of the waves was much louder here, he thought as he stepped out on the narrow run of beach that marked the delineation between ocean and land, large white foam-capped waves crashing along rough rocks and sliding up onto the sand in stretches of fragile white lace.

Luke and Leia had run ahead, their bare feet leaving tracks in the sand, little arms waving in excitement at a pair of women drying seaweed in long stretches across rocks further down the beach. Both were too tall to be Padme, and they did what Obi-Wan had done on top of the cliff, bringing their hands up to their faces in an attempt to see what the children were shouting about.

He bowed, unsure if they could see him this far away, understanding what Luke had meant by aunties. Padme's handmaidens. The two watching him were relaxed but aware: while few outside of Padme's circle had known it, the handful of quiet women in simple gowns that followed her everywhere she went were all trained warriors in their own right, devoting their lives to her with a fierceness that had reminded Obi-Wan of his own Jedi Order.

Here they wore the same simple tunics and pants the children did, but there was no mistaking their posture and the faint glint of blasters at their sides. If Obi-Wan were a threat he would soon be dead, and he raised his hands higher in the air just as he heard his name drift back to him on the sea breeze, Luke and Leia calling out who he was.

 _Padme really is here. I never thought I'd see her again._ "Good afternoon, ladies," he called out as he drew closer, relieved when one and then the other seemed to relax. He didn't know their faces, but that didn't mean anything. He'd never really paid attention to the girls back in the days before everything went so horribly wrong, and now he realized what an advantage Padme had in such a small, tight group of unknown devotees.

 _Padme could send any one of them out for supplies or information and no one would look at them twice._

"This is Obi-Wan Kenobi!" Luke declared, pointing up at him.

"I know," one of them said, surprised and shaking her head as the other openly stared. "I remember you, Master Kenobi! When C3PO brought Her Ladyship to us, but not you, we all thought you were dead!"

"We did."

And there it was, the strong, lovely voice his heart had waited to hear ever since Luke had introduced himself. A friend. He still had a friend alive in this world.

Padme Amidala was walking out of a small cave entrance just behind the women, her children running to hug her tightly and their happy babble bright and loud over the sound of the waves behind them. She was in the simplest garment and hairstyle he'd ever seen her in, a long tunic and leggings with her hair pulled back, but it had never been the fancy court costumes that had made her so instantly recognizable. It was her proud bearing and bright smile, and that was what he saw now through new tears threatening his vision. "Hello, Obi-Wan," she said.

"Hello."

She held out her arms and he almost stumbled hurrying over to hug her, the children scooting aside enough to let him in as well. "I can't believe you're alive, Padme," he whispered, heart almost breaking from joy. She was warm but thinner than he remembered, and he gently stroked her back, not wanting to hurt her.

"You, too," she said, pulling back from the hug to smile up at him, crying a little herself even as she lifted a sleeve to wipe away his tears. "Look at you. I should have known you would be ok somehow."

Luke and Leia beamed up at both of them, only leaving with great reluctance when the handmaidens declared it time for their baths and herded them off somewhere inside. Obi-Wan promised he wouldn't leave while they were gone and watched with delight as they waved at him before disappearing into the cave Padme had come out of.

"Walk with me?" their mother offered as she watched him wave back.

"Of course. We have so much to talk about. I don't even know where to begin," Obi-Wan said, holding his arm out for Padme to lean on as they slowly strolled down onto the beach proper. She was weaker than she had once been, the Force told him, weaker and with a strange, unreadable tint to her aura he hoped was not a wasting sickness of some kind.

"Where were you hiding?" she asked.

"Nowhere. I was running. Always running. From-" He didn't want to bring up Anakin and summon that dark cloud to spoil this perfect day just yet. "- the Empire."

She nodded, reaching down to pick up a seashell and then tossing it out into the waves. "We've been here since the beginning. My handmaidens took care of me in those first days."

"They brought you here?"

"They say I told them to find somewhere safe and to tell everyone I was dead. To be honest, I wasn't very coherent. I remember the day it all happened, but I don't really remember much of those first few days after everything changed. Did you know they had a funeral for me?"

"Yes," he murmured, the image of that waterworld man and his horrid news flashing through his mind. He wasn't angry with Padme for faking her death. There was no way she could have let Obi-Wan know it wasn't true, and it was plain to see this was one of the smartest things her handmaidens had ever done.

 _Vader won't search for you if he doesn't know you're alive._

He took a deep breath, reminding himself there was no way Anakin could find him on this planet. There was no way he could possibly know he was here, and so the children and Padme were safe.

"I have missed you so much, Padme," he said, covering her hand with his free one. "I am so, so happy to find you alive and well like this."

She gave him a smile tinged with sadness. "It's so different now, isn't it? Everything is so different."

"It is. So many gone. So much in darkness." He glanced back toward the cave. "But there is hope in those two. They are beautiful, Padme. Such beautiful, perfect children."

The two stood together in silence, lost in their own thoughts, the former queen leaning against the former general as the wind blew their hair back out of their faces. "It's the will of the Force that brought you here," she finally said as they looked out over the beautiful ocean and the bright foam and mirrored sunlight of its waves.

"Yes," Obi-Wan agreed, thinking back to that horrible moment in front of that dying star he would never tell anyone about. _It sent me to you._ "It wanted me to come here."

"The Force has need of you, Obi-Wan." They turned and started walking back, the thin, glassy lines of spent waves drifting in almost to their feet before falling away again. "You've seen my children. How special they are."

"Yes. It's incredible how powerful they are already." _I am meant to protect them. That is my purpose. That is what the Force kept me alive for._ Obi-Wan nodded to himself, ready to swear his saber to Padme the second she asked him to. That was undoubtedly where this conversation was going. "They must be protected," he said.

"Yes. Luke and Leia are the true Chosen Ones. Not their monster of a father."

"What? The 'Chosen Ones'?" He understood her anger but not her phrasing about the children. It felt like when he'd seen Luke's silhouette atop the ship wreckage, an unexpected bit of strangeness where none should be.

"The Jedi prophecy was wrong all along."

Obi-Wan slowed, her hand falling away as he pulled his arm back. "Padme, my dear, what are you talking about?"

"I felt it, Obi-Wan, on the day they were born, on the day that man tried to kill me. They saved me! They reached out and fought him, right there in my mind, and he didn't even know it." She smoothed the front of her tunic as if remembering it happening, lifting her chin proudly.

Obi-Wan let his consciousness unfurl out toward Padme's mind, trying to understand what unseen thing was happening directly in front of him, and took a step back in horror as he touched something horribly wrong. The low, quiet foam of the surf climbed over his boots and then washed back out again as the awful truth climbed into view.

Padme's mind was broken. It was like opening a beautiful jewelry box to find a clutch of hideous spiders inside, a tangle of squirming legs and fur and fangs.

"They are powerful, Obi-Wan. They are the Chosen Ones. But they are not safe as long as that monster is alive," she continued, unaware of the anguish in his eyes as she crouched down to look in the surf for more shells to pick up.

He no longer heard or saw the lazy roar of the ocean or Padme's lovely, determined face. Now that he looked more closely with the Force, he saw it all, the scars and ruined landscape of her mind, seared once by Anakin and then again by her own children instinctively fighting back against him. Those armies had raged on a level so deep even they didn't realize it, their powers keeping them safe during the subconscious battle.

But his dear friend Padme had had no Force training, no chance at all to escape the triple typhoons bearing down on the little island of her sanity. Her mind had borne the full brunt of all three of them at their most primal.

He hugged her tightly when she stood up again with a smooth pink shell in her hand, his tears spilling loose into her hair as he stroked it. _I am so sorry, Padme. I am so sorry I could not stop him._

She hugged him back tightly, misreading his reaction as agreement. "You see, my old friend. You do see. That monster cannot be allowed to live. He cannot be allowed to threaten my children now or ever." Padme looked up at him somberly, studying Obi-Wan's fresh tears. "You know what you must do then?"

When he said nothing, body and all words frozen beneath the new layer of ice on his soul, she took both of his hands in hers and squeezed them.

"My handmaidens have tried and failed, Obi-Wan. You are the only one who can do it. You must kill Anakin."


	12. Obligation

Obi-Wan walked aimlessly down the beach, trying to escape the terrible words he'd heard a few minutes ago. His boots splashed through the thin waves washing up, his hair blowing in his face as he ran both hands through it wildly. The sky was still a beautiful blue, the sea foam still tracing pretty patterns across the sand.

And Padme, poor, broken Padme, was still standing back there, waiting for his answer.

The answer he couldn't give.

He wandered over to the steep cliff walls and brought his hands up to rest on the rough, cold stone, leaning his head down between his arms and trying to even out his breathing.

Tears fell on the sand below, fading almost instantly as they did.

He closed his eyes and listened to the ocean behind him, to the strong, soothing rhythm of the waves. In and out. In and out. Forever. No sadness. No anger. Just the back and forth of the water sweeping across the beach.

Obi-Wan began to murmur to himself, letting the ocean set the pace of the verses that had brought him comfort in nearly all of his darkest hours. "There is no emotion, there is peace..."

Despair beat against the door of his mind, a black windstorm outside, but unlike his moment of nihilism on the starfighter, he did not give in to it.

He had a purpose now. Two, actually.

 _Luke._

 _Leia._

When Padme's hand touched his shoulder he was more in control. "Obi-Wan?"

"I cannot do it, Padme. I will not do it." He stood up and turned to her, summoning every last bit of the Negotiator he had left in him. "You would be much better served if I stayed here and protected your children."

"You don't think he deserves to die? For what he did to me? For what he tried to do to my children?"

"I am not an assassin."

She looked at him, her brown eyes narrowed and the wind gusting her hair over her shoulders. "The Force brings you all the way here, to this planet and this island and me and my children, and you deny it?"

"Perhaps I was brought here to help you. Padme, Anakin… hurt you."

"Oh, I know that. You think I don't?"

"Let me try to help you. Please?" He gestured to a low, flat shelf of rock nearby, cracked in places from its long-ago fall further up the cliff, and she went to it wordlessly, sitting down next to him. There was still so much that was achingly familiar about her: the proud line of her shoulders, the delicate way she folded her hands in her lap. It was almost like his encounter with Anakin on the ship, seeing someone you knew and yet suddenly didn't, a safe harbor now infested with sharks.

It was unsettling. "May I?" he asked, dreading touching her mind once again but knowing he would never forgive himself if he didn't try.

When she said nothing, he reached out and let his hands come to rest on her face. She said nothing, her chin lifting slightly, and he willed himself to reach once again into the squirming mass of her consciousness. Under the soft, pale skin of her cheeks, hate greeted him, long-brooded upon hate and despair and fear, and he understood immediately how hopeless it was, how long her mind had been twisting in the currents of what had happened.

Gritting his teeth, he began the monumental task of trying to soothe her mind, to reconnect pieces shattered so small and fine it was like sifting through dust and shards. It seemed she was lucid and coherent largely through sheer willpower alone.

That was all that was left of Padme Amidala, brave queen of Naboo, defiant force against the rising darkness of Palpatine and the Empire. The brute force of her will.

She hated her husband.

She loved her children.

Those were the only two truths left in her mind, the only two suns that shone over the jagged dunes of her soul and the writhing, seething pain that demanded blood and fire and would be sated by nothing less. The hissing mass of it hurt Obi-Wan, lurching through their shared touch and crawling down into his soul to tear at his mind and heart with vicious teeth.

He struggled against it anyway, fighting it so long the sun moved in the sky and the shadows shifted on the ground.

Padme sat quietly, watching him with unreadable eyes, as still as the stone they sat on. One of the handmaidens came to stand out on the beach, watching cautiously from a distance, but Padme lifted her hand and let it fall again without looking away from Obi-Wan, and she retreated back into the caves.

Sweat formed on his brow and hers, and still nothing changed. Everything he tried was swallowed up like jewels tossed into a greedy, dank swamp. The sun began to sink, the late afternoon light taking on a golden hue, and Luke and Leia came out to play at one point but were quickly rushed back inside by the two handmaidens.

When his hands were shaking, fingertips twitching against her skin in a random staccato, Padme finally reached up and brushed them away. The spell broke, and he leaned back with a long, ragged gasp for air. "I told you, Obi-Wan. I know very well he hurt me. If it weren't for my children I would be dead."

He hunched over, resting his arms on his legs, trying to straighten out his own thinking and find the right words to say. "I am so sorry, Padme. I am so sorry you have been here alone."

Rubbing his temples, he looked up through his fingers at her as something clicked, something he hadn't been able to focus on during the non-stop fight with the chaos in her mind. "There… there was a thought I didn't understand." He closed his eyes, trying to pick up the idea and brush the worst of the grime off of it. "Ahsoka… Why were you thinking of her?"

Padme reached over to smooth his hair out of his face, shaking her head. "I sometimes send my handmaidens out for information, just to help me keep up on how awful the galaxy has become. Our second year here Allari brought back news of a new resistance group. A tiny one, barely organized, led by Tano. I spent months debating contacting her."

"Did you try?"

"We didn't know where she was. Still don't. And I decided I wouldn't trust her with my children anyway."

"Why?"

"Anakin's former padawan?" She gave a snort. "Why not just give them to the monster himself?"

Obi-Wan stood, wanting this conversation over, and held out his hand to help her up. "I am Anakin's former master. Why do you trust me?"

The Senator of Naboo regarded him now, the ice in her eyes so cold he felt his blood slow as she took the offered hand. "Because you owe me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You owe me for sneaking aboard my ship when I went to Mustafar. One could argue, quite easily, that you were the one that set him off."

"I will not kill him."

She pressed ahead, the hatred inside her finding a crack to bleed through. "Did Anakin learn to shirk his duty from you as well? It is as just as much your fault as his what happened. Maybe more."

"Padme…"

"You will face him and kill him, or die trying. I demand this of you as your blood debt to me and my children."

"Please…" Obi-Wan begged her.

"Say it," she commanded.

"I…"

"SAY IT."

"I will do as you ask," he whispered, loathing himself as he lied to her.

They walked back together in frigid silence, his back stiff and eyes dark, the sound of the waves the only thing left between them. He felt hollow, and angry, but he was also confused as he hung his head to look down at his boots leaving prints in the sand. A black rage was seeping in from somewhere outside himself, a heavy shadow mixing with the golden light of the sun low on the horizon.

 _Padme?_

No. This was too powerful for her, too organized and ruthless in its focus.

Padme looked up, and he heard a different sound now over the surf and the tide starting to roll in.

After so long alone on the quiet green plains of this planet, it took Obi-Wan took a second to place the low roar even though it had been in the background for most of his life.

The throaty roar of a ship arcing far overhead.

His awful feeling clung to the tiny silhouette, a black comet smearing the deep blue dome of the sky. Both Obi-Wan and Padme stared at it as it disappeared over the cliffs, sweeping inland in a search pattern.

"Anakin," he whispered in disbelief.

Padme let out a soft, insane laugh at the name, cupping her hands over her mouth in fear and amazement. They broke out in a run back to the caves, leaving rough, ragged marks in the sand behind them.


	13. Loss

Anakin moved down the beach, a shadow come early in the last ruddy glow of daylight, the obscene heat of the charm Sidious had given him nestled tight against this chest like a coiled serpent.

The sun had just set, the waves rolling in deep indigo topped with oranges and purples, and the scent of the sea filled his lungs, brisk and strong and forever alien to one born of the desert.

He drew his saber but didn't turn it on, spinning it once in his palm as he assessed the terrain ahead. The stark grey stitching of the Imperial logo on his shoulder caught the fading light, cast in a deep red against a black background.

There had to be interference this close, some kind of psychic feedback bouncing between him and Obi-Wan, because Anakin had the unmistakable feeling that he himself was already here, a faint mirror of his own power lurking somewhere ahead in the golden stretches of sand and cliffs.

He had seen the wreckage of the single-man starfighter, and then another, larger transport ship nicely tucked away in a large, natural cavern further down along the cliffs. He'd landed his own next to it, wondering who Obi-Wan had found to hole up with as he descended roughly carved steps to the shore proper and begun the long walk toward him.

It didn't matter. Anyone who got in his way would die.

He hadn't come this far to let the old man escape him again.

Now Anakin listened to the water rushing up along the sand, heart pounding as he drifted to a halt. There was a familiar shiver in the Force, the presence of another he had known nearly all his life, and he could almost hear the talisman tucked away in his robes hiss in glee.

Obi-Wan.

And there he was, distant, striding toward Anakin, his proud silhouette unmistakable for all of the dimness of twilight.

Anakin felt a rush of angry excitement at the sight of him, his animal instincts now pleased in the same way his intellect was. His former master was here. And this time there was nowhere to run.

It had been five long years of hunting. At night, when there was nothing but silence and memories to keep him company, Anakin would turn to thoughts of Obi-Wan, taking as long as he wished to contemplate where he might be, what he might be doing, and how Anakin might catch him. It had become a soothing ritual of sorts: focus his anger on his former master and let it blossom out into plans, a different one for each scenario he could think of.

He never dwelled too long on why he hated his master: that led to thoughts of the awful day on Mustafar, and while he always kept that day foremost in his meditations for the symbol it had become, he subconsciously ghosted over the exact details of what had happened. Precise recollection led to thoughts he didn't care for and quickly, hastily buried beneath the easily stoked fire of his anger.

Now, with the chase almost at an end, Anakin wondered what he would do once all of this was over. It frightened him a little to see that the end of all of this was coming. What would he do when there was nothing but the dismal hours of the early morning and the memories they brought?

 _Obi-Wan will still be alive._ It would not be over. It would simply move from the chase to the imprisonment. _Whatever form that will take._

"Found you, old man!" he shouted over the tide, gripping his saber tighter. _I will take my revenge on you, finally, for all the ways you have wronged me._

The Jedi came to a stop well out of reach, well-worn boots sinking into the sand as he drew his own saber but, like Anakin, did not light it. The two stood, unmoving, the line of the sea behind them, a halo of indigo fading to purple that swept upward into the sky.

Obi-Wan fixed him with blue eyes made grey by the falling night as the Jedi lowered himself into a defensive position, sliding one foot out in the sand. The motion was one of easy grace, something he'd done a hundred thousand times.

Anakin knew this: he had been there for many of them.

Despite the familiarity of this move, adrenaline shot through with the Force warned Anakin something was different this time about the man before him: Obi-Wan was stronger, somehow, his will closer to the beautifully smooth steel it had been during the Clone Wars.

There was a deep sadness tinging it, even more so than the last time they'd met, but hope as well.

That tiny spark, now as foreign to Anakin as the concept of an ocean had once been, disturbed him the most. No one should have hope. Not Anakin. Not Obi-Wan. It had no place in their lives anymore.

The padawan growled, flicking his saber on in a snap of cruel red. "You think you can beat me?" Anakin spread his arms wide, challenging him as he spun his blade behind him and let it come to rest aimed straight at Obi-Wan.

"I do not want to fight you, Anakin." Obi-Wan's saber came on anyway, blue hissing to life beside the older man as he lifted it and extended his free hand, two fingers pointing at Anakin. Another stance so familiar it made a small, secret part of Anakin ache with loneliness even though it was pointed at him.

"What you want doesn't matter, old man."

Obi-Wan nodded, the glowing line of his saber unwavering. "It never has."

Anakin smiled, letting the Force wash over him and sing to him of the heavy weight of the saber in his hand and the tense symphony of his muscles. This arc of blue and red he understood. The language of violence, so brutally elegant in its dichotomy. Win. Lose. Live. Die.

He let the Force continue flowing into him, a whirlpool taking in every bit of the warm dusk and the glimmering water and the grim face of his former master. He wanted to remember every moment of this battle, this one last fight before he broke Obi-Wan and the fearsome mettle of his will was never seen again.

His master glowed brightly in that strange halo all Jedi had, but there was another light dancing down the beach toward them from behind Obi-Wan and Anakin felt a tinge of curiosity steal in alongside his growing battlelust.

Two lights, actually.

Two small flames, little will-o-wisps that darted along in rough lines toward the two men, ignoring inaudible shouts from somewhere further back on the beach. _Children? Force-sensitive children?_

Anakin glared, trying to see what the Force was already showing him. _Is this some trick of his?_ Obi-Wan sensed it too, and let out a sharp curse. "Luke! Leia!" he called out behind him, not daring to fully turn away from the black tiger crouched before him. "Stay back!"

He darted his gaze back to Obi-Wan for a moment, alert for an attack. None came, only a new and frightened determination hardening on Obi-Wan's face. There was only the distinct slur of feet in sand, two little ones running as fast as they could toward the two men from somewhere further down the shore.

Anakin risked looking past the Jedi to the twin flames, the two children whose names meant nothing to him.

His heart stopped.

They were trotting up behind Obi-Wan, holding hands, more shadows than people in the darkening evening but painted in such lovely, achingly familiar swirls of the Force Anakin took a step back.

 _They are mine._

 _I don't know how, but these children are mine._

Obi-Wan took a step forward even as he reached out a cautioning hand behind him. "Anakin..." In the endless eternity of that moment, Anakin heard the question, the plea, the warning, every nuance of his former master's emotions swelling through the Force and that one word in a swift, powerful crush of impressions.

 _Do you see who they are? Do you understand? Please don't scare them._

 _If you hurt them, I will kill you._

Anakin's soul reached back out to him, blind feelings returning what his conscious mind could not. _I see. I don't understand. How? HOW?_

"Papa?" the boy called from behind Obi-Wan.

The girl said nothing.

Anakin stood, black cloak blowing against him, and listened to that single word, that simple question. It drifted down into his soul, a beautiful red leaf sinking down through icy autumn waters, down into the murk where nothing had come to rest for years beyond the smooth, heavy stones of grief.

He extinguished his saber, hooking it on his belt without realizing it.

"Papa?" the boy asked again, tilting a head that would be blonde in better light.

The word drove Anakin to his knees.

There was only the rich, crimson glow on the horizon and the blue of Obi-Wan's saber between them. Obi-Wan turned it off, voice choked with emotion as the gloom of the beach slid over the four of them. "This is Luke, Anakin. And this is Leia."

Anakin stared at the children tucked behind Obi-Wan, at their tiny linked hands, at the solemn eyes of the girl and the bright ones of the boy. His hands lay useless in his lap, his entire body somewhere far away as he sat in the warm, damp sand and listened to the girl speak.

"Please don't fight him, Papa," she whispered.

The waves rolled in and out, and with every word spoken and every push of white up onto the beach that fell away again, brushing and teasing along the edges of his cloak, Anakin felt more of himself vanish, taken out to sea forever.

"These are your children," Obi-Wan said in a voice hesitant with the pain of hope mixed with fear, holstering his own saber and kneeling to Anakin and the children's height and wrapping his arms around them comfortingly as they stared back at Anakin with the intense, fearless curiosity only the very young can have.

The long-held dreams of finding Obi-Wan, and the newer ones of capturing him, slid away into the surf, crumbling into nothing under the gaze of his children.

"Papa." The boy, Luke, Obi-Wan had called him, tried to walk over to him, but Obi-Wan gently tightened his arm around the boy without speaking. Luke looked to Obi-Wan and back to Anakin, becoming still once again as Obi-Wan studied Anakin with an unflinching intensity.

 _I have chased you for five years. I took everything from you_ , Anakin thought.

 _And your only thought now is to keep my child safe. You were willing to fight me to do that. You still are._

The next wave swept in and back out. Anakin's hatred of Obi-Wan wavered, weakened as the Jedi stood.

"Do you see how beautiful they are, Anakin?"

The hatred died, leaving a hole Anakin had no time to examine or fill up with other emotion before the girl, Leia, spoke. "Mama's here." She hugged Obi-Wan's leg and then turned her gaze to a fourth figure walking slowly up to the three.

 _Mama?_ Anakin did not dare to look up past the delicate, bare feet sinking into the sand next to the little girl. He remained staring at Leia, at her sensitive brown eyes that betrayed exactly who was standing next to her, unwilling to destroy the fierce, confused hope that burst forth and would surely die as soon as he saw a guardian, a stranger.

Not her.

It couldn't be her.

She was dead. He was alone. This was the truth that had defined his life for five long, agonizing years. It was the truth that had powered his most vicious, most legendary attacks on his enemies, on the foes of the Republic, and on himself.

She was dead. He was alone.

"Anakin." That voice, that sweet, lovely voice he had ached to hear for so long saying his name, lured him into breaking that vow, to bringing his face up to one he knew as well as his own.

Padme.

The last and worst demon to plague him, the sharp-fanged monstrosity of grief that had clawed at him every morning when he woke and every night when he slept until his spirit was in long, ragged shreds, was pulled out into the ocean with another roll of the waves, weak and useless, no longer the ruler of his heart.

The Great Lord of the Empire knelt there in the sand, face upturned to his wife as she reached down to touch his cheek. There was nothing left in him now, his soul as perfectly, serenely empty as a seashell washed clean by the tides. There was nothing beyond her beautiful face and the warm touch of her hand on his skin.

He stood, unable to look away from her, and when she turned to walk back he followed without thought and without hesitation.

It was Padme. The willowy line of her back, the soft sway of her hips. She was here, as real as the saber that hung at his belt, walking back the way the children had come, toward the ebony towers of the cliffs and the blackness of the night. There was nothing else and no one in the world to Anakin, the shining light of her existence burning the rest away.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Anakin started, glaring at the one who had done it.

Obi-Wan. Someone else, someone not-her.

The Jedi spoke, leaning in close and words laced with the quiet intensity of a warning as his fingers dug into the black draped over Anakin's shoulder. "Don't go. Please." Perhaps Anakin's grief had clung to Obi-Wan on its way out to sea: Anakin wasn't sure. It was hard to fathom anything other than Padme walking away.

He shrugged Obi-Wan off with a snarl and turned, a wolf barely tamed, and followed her into the night.

* * *

Obi-Wan watched Anakin leave, all his words gone, only held back by the warmth of the two children clinging to his legs, recalling what had happened not long ago in the cave.

Padme's stare and words had been clear, abundantly clear, as they had argued once again upon returning to a place once thought safe.

" _We need to leave now, Padme. He's coming!" Obi-Wan hadn't expected his lie to be exposed so soon, but Anakin had always had a way of disrupting plans, he ruefully thought._

" _We are going nowhere. You are going to fight him. And win."_

" _Padme, it is not in me to murder him! Please, let's just take the children and run!"_

" _You swore to fight him!" She slapped him across the face, a brisk, hard sting of palm on cheek, the sound echoing across the rough stone walls around them. Obi-Wan said nothing, closing his eyes and awaiting further violence he didn't have the heart to avoid._

 _The handmaidens kept the children back out of sight, muttering to each other in the dim candlelight of the back rooms._

" _You are weak, Obi-Wan. But I thought you might be when it came to this." She pushed him away, a gesture more symbolic than physical, a release from the dark promise she'd coerced out of him._

 _Obi-Wan had thought he would never hear something as chilling as Padme's demand for Anakin's murder. Her next words proved he had been wrong. "I hope you will be stronger for my children than you were for me."_

" _What?"_

 _She drew a long, shuddering breath in and out, deciding on something carefully considered and then finding the strength to say it. "You will take them and go. You said they needed to be protected. If you cannot kill Anakin, then you will save them."_

" _I will protect them with my life, Padme. I swear it. But we can all escape! There is no need for…" he struggled to find a word to encompass the horror of what she implied. "...this…"_

" _There is no escape for me, Obi-Wan. There hasn't been since that day on Mustafar." She gave him a weary, bitter smile. "There is no hope for me. Or for him. You know that. But there is hope for my children."_

 _He searched for something to say, anything, but nothing came out._

 _Padme lifted her hand to fondly pat the same spot she had so viciously hit a moment before, and then turned away._

" _Luke? Leia?" she asked, walking back and kneeling down in front of them as Obi-Wan looked on, numb, from the cave entrance. The handmaidens disappeared back into the other rooms hollowed out further back to prepare for who knew what. "Do you remember the story I told you about the forest fairy?"_

" _The pretty one that lived in the woods where there was a big dragon?"_

" _Yes, that one. Would you tell me that story, my little ones? You know it's one of my favorites."_

 _Obi-Wan frowned at this, unwilling to his core to consider what Padme's last words to him had meant. Anakin was not on top of them just yet but there was not a lot of time before he would be. Folding his arms, angry, Obi-Wan almost spoke up to argue with her once again, but as she held out her hands to stroke her children's faces he realized what was happening._

 _This was a last loving, aching attempt to burn into your mind the face of someone you knew you would never see again._

 _This was what he had tried to do in Satine's last moments. He closed his eyes, blocking out the idyllic twilight of the seashore, and begged the Force for strength in the face of whatever was to come this terrible evening._

" _There was a fairy in the woods. The woods with all the big trees. And she was pretty and kind and smart and helped all of the people that lived there. Lots of people." Luke began with the thoughtful, clumsy diction of a young child._

" _But there was a dragon too. And he ate everything and burned houses and trees and everything and all the people were really scared of him," Leia continued._

 _Their words flowed into each other's perfectly with the easy, thoughtless comfort of whole lives lived side-by-side. "The fairy had strong magic and she knew she could beat the bad dragon if she fought him."_

" _So she got her gold and her magic and her heart and she went to where the dragon lived. And they had a big fight."_

 _Padme nodded, taking their hands in hers and kissing them. "And?"_

 _Leia blinked, rubbing at her eyes. "And there was a lot of noise and lightning and the forest started shaking and then it stopped and the dragon was gone."_

 _Luke had a death grip on Padme's hand, little fingers turning white. "And the fairy was gone too."_

" _But the people lived happily ever after, didn't they?" Padme murmured, smoothing Leia's hair and then Luke's. "All the people in the village and all of the little children." She pried her hand free from Luke's and drew them both into a tight embrace, kissing the tops of their heads._

 _She looked up at Obi-Wan, voice cooling. "Stall him as long as you can. I would like a little more time with them."_

 _He let the finality of her words cut into him, bowed, and stalked off into the dusk, bleeding anger and pain behind him as he went._

And now here he was, alone on a beach with his former padawan's children clinging to him, tears in their eyes, as an old, dear friend led another off to slaughter.

"The ship. Mama said you'd take us to the ship because we're not allowed to go back to the caves," Leia whimpered, arms wrapped around his boot.

Luke sniffled from the other side of him, wet face pressed against his leg. "She said you were a good dragon."

 _Please help me be strong for them, Master._

 _Please. I don't know if I can do this._

Obi-Wan crouched and hugged them both tight, trying to collect the random, anxious whirl of his thoughts and form a plan. _The type of starfighter he came in on is short range only. There has to be a cruiser in orbit. At least. How much time do we have before they send reinforcements to check on him?_ "Can you show me where the ship is?" he asked, standing with Luke in his arms and Leia already running ahead.

It took ten long, hard minutes of slogging through the sand and the night to reach the cavern and the two ships tucked into the velvet blackness there. Obi-Wan ran past the sleek lines of Anakin's starfighter to the larger transport vessel next to it.

Frantically tapping in the code to open the main bay doors as Leia told him the numbers in the careful singsong of an important fact memorized, he led them both inside and set Luke down. He slapped on the lights and found his way past a half-dozen chairs to the main console while the doors slid shut behind them in a rough growl of metal on metal. "Have you two ever flown before?"

"No."

"Sit in those chairs and fasten those buckles, ok?" His fingers flew over the sprawling board, trying to remember the start-up sequence for a vehicle in this class. Old Temple lessons, long forgotten, slowly came back to him and he let out a low, relieved sigh as the automatic flight prep countdown began in a steady pulse of blue and green buttons.

"Are we leaving?"

"Yes." He turned to find Leia helping Luke buckle in, the young boy crying silently as she did. The ship purred to life beneath them, a good engine hidden beneath its battered steel skin.

"Luke." Sinking to the floor in front of him, Obi-Wan put his hands on Luke's knees, trying to get him to meet his gaze even as the Jedi tried to hide his own fear. "We are not leaving yet. I'm going back for your mother and your father."

The little boy shook his head vigorously, tears bright on his cheeks.

"I won't be long."

Leia shook her head too, a perfect mirror of Luke rendered in slightly darker tosses of hair. "No. You can't go."

Obi-Wan pointed at her chair. "Please, Leia. Buckle up. I'll be back."

He jogged back to the doors and jabbed at the large, faded blue panel of the door control to open it, checking that he still had his saber at his side and sending up a silent prayer to the Force that he would not be too late.

The doors did not open.

He tapped the button again and then again, struck dumb by this simple thing that had always worked every time before in life not working now. The dry click taunted him, sounding exactly like they always did but the doors not responding.

 _Is it broken somehow?_

Leia spoke behind him, buckling herself in as she did. Her words were as final as the snap of the harness, metal against metal. "You can't go."

Obi-Wan turned, sensing a new, powerful feeling pressing down all around him: the Force sat inside the doors in front of him, messy and intense in only the way a child could imagine it, tangled in a tight ball around the door controls.

One or both of them were keeping him from leaving.

He rested his head against the cold wall above the controls, unable to face them because he wasn't sure he would be able to keep calm if he did. _Do not shout. Do not be angry. They are so young. They are frightened._ "Please, children," he said, forcing his panic down and turning around once he trusted himself to do so without shouting. "You have to let me go. There isn't much time."

"Don't go," Luke whimpered from his seat, a fragile little boy almost lost in the webbing of his restraints. "You won't come back."

"Mama is broken. She's going to break Papa too." Leia said, and this simple, matter-of-fact statement stabbed Obi-Wan and gutted him all the way down, the daughter far more cutting than the mother just as a new knife is always sharper for lack of use.

The difference was that Leia, like all small children, just told the truth as she saw it. She didn't aim to hurt.

But she did anyway. "Mama told us he's a monster and she has to fight him. Don't go."

Obi-Wan fought for air, and then for speech, striding over to catch first Leia and then Luke in a protective hug. "I swear to you, Leia and Luke, that I will return. I will return. I will not leave you alone. Ever." He closed his eyes, and reached out with the Force, trying to show them the fierceness of his promise, the way it held him up even now in the face of the awful, foreboding unknown that awaited him outside.

"We don't have a lot of time before your father's men come. Please let me go. Please trust me."

The two children traded the long, nuanced glances of those communicating through feelings and words no one else could see.

"Mama always said Papa is a monster." Luke said, drying his tears as best he could, voice shaky. "Is Papa a monster?"

Obi-Wan clenched his fists at his sides, fear for them and for Padme and for Anakin a crushing weight on his chest. "There may be good left in your father. But we'll never know if you don't let me go right now."

Leia sniffled loudly, and the doors behind Obi-Wan slid open.

* * *

Padme was not a ghost.

Her feet left small prints in the sand, a trail that Anakin marred with his own larger ones as he trailed behind her, lost in wonder.

A flurry of questions swept through his mind, too many to pick out any one of them. He barely trusted himself to speak, let alone form any kind of rational, coherent idea.

His beloved wife was alive. She had been placed on the idealistic pedestal of memory for so long it was hard to take her back down from it, to see the reality of her once again. The long braid trailing down her back, a few short locks sticking out as it worked its way down to the tail, the wrinkles in her clothing that you never noticed in memories. They made her even more beautiful because it meant this was her. Not a dream. Not one of the worn recollections of their short, passionate life together that he'd pored over again and again.

Vader, the angel of death and glory and empire, did not exist in this moment. There was only Anakin Skywalker, a widower no longer. He tried to understand that, to approach with deference and downcast eyes the lofty god of happiness and seek his permission to experience that feeling long ago extinguished by three simple words from his Master. _"She is dead."_

"You're alive." He repeated it, convincing himself, his heart so tight in his chest he barely felt the Sith charm smoldering next to it.

She paused and looked over her shoulder at him, her beautiful profile stark in the newly risen night. "I am. Come inside."

They were walking into a cave, to a small seating area with simple rugs and pillows. When did they get there?

Who were the two women standing guard outside?

He didn't care. He took a step and then another, closing the space between them with a fierce hug from behind, burying his face in her hair. There was the sweet scent of her, light and clean, and then something else swept in over it, a faint echo of the bone-deep unease of his Master's underground chambers.

Madness.

"Padme?" he asked, turning her to face him, gloved hands gentle on her thin arms and worry spiraling into the black void of fear.

It was his wife's face that turned up to his, his wife's eyes that regarded him, his wife's perfect mouth that spoke. "You should sit. We have so much to talk about." But it wasn't her. Someone had ripped her mind apart like a pack of starving beasts and sat back to let it try to stitch itself back together. It horrified him, the wrongness of looking into her soul, the thousand squirming emotions and disjointed thoughts he felt in her gaze.

 _No. No. This can't be!_

But it was. Someone had destroyed her as surely as if they'd shoved her from the top of Coruscant's highest tower.

Anakin reached out to her, hands tracing her face and her shoulders as his Force senses sped along too fast for him to stop, crashing into the awful, inescapable truth of the violent chaos of Padme's mind.

 _It wasn't someone. It was me._

Padme brought her hands up to rest atop his and observed him in icy silence, the vengeance of a thousand dead souls achieved in the heartbreaking emptiness of her eyes.

 _I did this. On Mustafar._

Anakin collapsed where he stood, crushing a few of the pillows laid out there, staring at her in horror as she gently lowered herself to sit with him, a spider coming to rest next to its victim with all of its long, lovely limbs folding in neatly as it settled down for a long-awaited meal.

There was a small wooden tray already placed on the floor next to them, a steaming tea pot placed between a worn and cracked set of plain cups from Naboo.

"Do you see what you've done, little blackbird?" She put one hand out and then another, crawling atop him, rising like a terrible sun over him, and he could do nothing but look at her even as her insanity and deep, seething hatred threatened to blind his Force senses.

The glare swiftly boiled away his mind's futile attempts at rationalization, at higher thought, at everything until there was nothing left but the bare, rough ground of his soul and the truths that pooled black like shade at noon under his memories.

 _I love you._

 _I did this to you._

A sob rose from somewhere deep inside him as she echoed his next thought. "You should die for this." She tilted her head, braid sliding along her shoulder, eyes so close to his they filled his vision with exactly how much she loathed him. "Don't you think?"

The Force howled around him as he nodded, tears building, his soul in agony so hot and intense he could barely breathe. "Padme… I…"

 _I remember when I first met you. You were so kind and pure and beautiful and I didn't know there could be anyone like you alive in a world like the one I'd grown up in._

"Silence. You are here to do one thing, Anakin Skywalker." She sat back, the warmth of her body retreating, and picked up one of the cups with the same grace she had once used in rearranging his Jedi collars. "One thing my handmaidens could not persuade you to do."

 _I remember when we met again, all those years later, and I'd wondered about you and if it had all been a childish fantasy of a slave, making you as perfect in my mind as I had. And then I saw you again. I had been right the first time._

 _You were perfect._

Padme held the tea out to him, an avalanche of hatred rolling down through the Force to obliterate the last of his hope. "You will die for what you have done. And you will do it tonight."

 _I remember our first kiss. Our first night. Our wedding. All the plans we made. The life we would have._

Anakin knew what was in the drink as he took the cup, the smell of the poison obvious even if he hadn't seen the ugly, grey sludge sitting at the bottom of the colorless tea. The drink had the same medicinal scent the assassin had inhaled in his rooms in the ruined Jedi Temple in what felt like another life, one lived and forgotten and buried long ago.

He watched his wife, this battered and twisted thing that wore her face, pick up the other cup and lift it to her lips. His wife. His victim. Sacrificed on the altar of his arrogance and stupidity and selfishness. She drank, emptying her cup, embracing a fate he himself had given her all those years ago.

 _She will never come back._

 _I remember everything we had. Everything we would have._

 _And it's all gone. Forever._

 _Because of me._

"I love you," he whispered between tears, bringing the cup up to his mouth.

She set hers down, never looking away from him. "Drink, Anakin."

And he did.


	14. Again

Night ruled the beach, ebony ocean and sky crowned in starlight.

It taunted Obi-Wan as he blindly ran along the shore as fast as he could, splashing through the onyx glass of the waves washing up beneath his feet. His footprints vanished every time the ocean rolled up: nothing behind him, no sign he had ever walked and lived and hoped and feared.

Nothing ahead of him. Only darkness and the sharp, grim teeth of that fear working into his heart as he flew past the spot he and Anakin had met, the impression of where the other man had sunk to his knees in the sand filling with shallow puddles as the tide drifted in.

 _Please let them be safe._

The voice of logic and reason, usually given first say in Obi-Wan's decisions, was silent as he ran. There was no justifiable reason to pursue at all the mad dog his padawan had become, much less one to follow him into the tomb his demented wife was making for the both of them. With an unseen Imperial cruiser likely circling this planet somewhere overhead and every chance Anakin would com for help if Padme failed in her horrific plan, the rational choice would have been to leave, and leave quickly.

But Obi-Wan's mind had retreated to leave only his heart shouting the truth of what Obi-Wan had seen and felt in their last confrontation as he raced back to the cave.

 _There is still hope. There is still good in him. I have to try to save him._

 _No matter what he's done, I have to try to save him._

He slowed, panting, as he approached the rough homestead of Padme and her children, the dimmest glow coming from inside the cave mouth outlining it in flickers of orange. The Force told him of loss here, a deep and unseen rift across his senses before he saw with his own eyes the silhouetted bodies of Padme's last two handmaidens collapsed at the foot of the entrance. Obi-Wan avoided looking at them as he approached and stepped over them to go in, forcing himself to move ahead without stopping.

The fear that had kept pace with him all the way here told him there was no need to pause and study the gruesome tableau of the women and their blasters, because once he saw what likely awaited him inside there would be enough horror and anguish to last the rest of his life.

No one was in the first room, only the faint sound of waves from the beach and the flicker of candles scattered about the large space, but the finality of the grave stole over him as intimately as a lover as he entered, whispering that it owned this place now, that it would own it forever.

Obi-Wan wanted to turn and run, the same heart that had brought him here now fragile and terrified of what it would find. Taking a shaky breath, he moved deeper inside, to the second room two young children had spent their short lives playing and sleeping in.

His heart stopped, freezing him in the doorway.

Death hung heavy in the air here, a proud beast showing off its spoils, the shadows of the room its sable-draped arms spread wide over the two bodies sprawled out among the pillows.

Padme, her dark hair mercifully across her face as she lay on her side.

And Anakin, on his back, eyes closed and tears still wet on his face.

The Jedi had seen the dead up close since he was a padawan: his master, his enemies, his friends, innocent bystanders caught up in the horror of the Clone Wars. There had been so many over the years, such a long line of gore and blood and violence, but deep inside his soul the master had never truly dealt with the idea that one day his own padawan's face would be at the end of that line. It had been hard enough to place Padme's there, back in those first painful months after he had fled civilization.

"No!" Obi-Wan howled, rushing over to drop between them, clutching at Padme's arm with one hand and Anakin's chest with the other. "No!" The cry threw itself against the rough stone walls and back again, violent and loud, but the quiet of the two he held remained unbroken.

They were still warm, the cruelest part of all of it. _If I had only gotten here faster…_

A sob breaking free, he crumpled forward, sending the Force rushing through him into them, searching blindly and desperately for something other than that hideous silence, something he could grab ahold of and try to heal. Anything.

The midnight sea of Padme's mind remained flat and still, the first of the two to answer his cry because it was so painfully clear. She was gone. Padme would never rise and never speak again, a fragile form sleeping forever on a planet so far away from home.

He let go of her, tears flooding his vision as another face was added to the grim line of loss, and slid his other hand to Anakin's chest, focusing his agony on him. The man lay motionless beneath him, swathed in the black folds of Vader's robes but the tears on his cheeks taunting Obi-Wan with the fact Anakin had been here too.

"You don't get to do this, you son of a bitch!" Obi-Wan hissed through his sobs, fingers twisting in the heavy cloak draped across Anakin's chest as he bent over him. He felt the emptiness, the all-consuming dark that spread out like ink around Anakin and enticed Obi-Wan to throw himself into it and follow his former padawan into oblivion.

 _No! NO!_

He circled the edge of it with his mind, panicked, his breath catching in his throat as the Force glimmered. In the middle of the ink drowning Anakin floated the faintest spark, the last star left in a cold, empty night and fading even as Obi-Wan realized it was there.

 _Anakin!_ he shouted without words, his soul crying out to the other one slipping away. _Fight it, Anakin!_

Did the star grow brighter?

 _Anakin, please!_

A thread of the Force, as frail as the light Obi-Wan clung to, touched his frantic mind. _I have to die for what I've done._

Gasping in surprise, the older man reached out to cradle Anakin's face in his hands, sending a dangerously powerful jolt of healing through the younger one as he drew as much of the Force into himself as he could. It was like trying to direct an avalanche with his hands, his will strong and raw, laced with anger and fear. _Not today, Anakin._

 _I hurt Padme._

Obi-Wan guided the jagged threads of the Force as best he could, the unfiltered Light searing the edges of his mind, and fought unconsciousness as he leaned over to touch his forehead to Anakin's. _And you will hurt your children if you do this!_ An outsider watching would only have seen one man mourning the loss of another, a brother or lover, perhaps, given the intensity of his torment.

 _Children?_ came the puzzled, half-formed thought.

 _Luke! Leia!_

Anakin's consciousness shivered as he remembered them, as he remembered anything beyond Padme, but the last of his strength was almost gone. _Luke and Leia… I can't leave them!_

 _Anakin, you have to hold on! Please!_ The Force cascaded through Obi-Wan as he strained to open his mind and soul to it even more, its power vast and heavy as it fell to pound through him like a waterfall crashing down from a great height. He felt like the bones would rattle out of his body if he didn't go insane first. _Fight!_

The dim point of the star was almost out now, black pressing in all around it. _I… don't know… if I can..._

 _FIGHT, DAMN YOU!_

The light flickered, and then flared to life as the Force surged up from the man below, Anakin's beleaguered mind surfacing to clutch for purchase like a drowning man given one last chance at rescue.

Obi-Wan's spirit did not hesitate to reach down and catch him, healing as it went and dragging Anakin's soul back from the vicious, hungry night that had almost eaten him whole. The Force careened wildly around them as the Jedi instinctively fought to repair the worst damage the poison had done to Anakin's body and the Sith fought to embrace the life he had almost lost. Dazzling and white, the wild power of the two clashed as they did so, Anakin and Obi-Wan's thoughts and emotions swirling together in a chaotic storm so intense neither could tell exactly which were their own and which had come crashing in blindly from the other.

 _don't do this you can't do this i don't want to lose you i hate you how could you do that to me i love you i hate you i missed you love you missed you missed you_

Obi-Wan let out a deep, shuddering sigh as he dragged the last of Anakin back into the realm of the living, sitting up to clutch at his head as Anakin drew a sharp and sudden breath, a loud rasp that echoed in the hush of the cave. Rolling over onto his hands and knees, away from Obi-Wan and the unmoving shadow of his wife's body, he choked and coughed, black bile splattering across the floor under him.

Trying to steady himself against the cushions, Obi-Wan reached out a trembling hand and caught Anakin's shoulder, attempting to give him a little more healing to help him through the painful process of his body expelling the poison. "Anakin…"

As the coughing fit subsided, the boy who had grown into a monster looked up at him with the pained determination to live Obi-Wan hadn't seen since he had been grievously wounded during a long-ago battle in the Clone Wars. "Help… me… Obi-Wan..."

Obi-Wan stared down into the yellow eyes of his hunter and heard the voice of his dearest friend, the two realities unable to coexist in his mind. The loud storm of their renewed Force bond still lingering in his mind, the Jedi tried to clear his exhausted mind and focus on which of the raging emotions inside him was paramount. There was anger. So much anger, but also the smallest hope Anakin could be saved. Fear circled too, the fear of what might happen if he trusted his Padawan again. And finally there was love. That was the hardest to admit, but it was there.

It was the hardest to admit because, despite everything that had happened and the unyielding hatred logic demanded as a result, Obi-Wan knew love was the strongest emotion he felt for Anakin. Gazing down at the pathetic figure hunched over before him, he realized that, for better or for worse, his heart burned with the same fierce protectiveness for this man that it did for his children.

"... don't leave me… please..." the padawan begged.

"I won't," the master said.

The younger man stared up into Obi-Wan's face, dazed and afraid: the Jedi was unsure if he'd even heard him. And then the strange, disconcerting eyes closed as Anakin passed out, slumping onto his side against Obi-Wan's legs. He would live, the Force told Obi-Wan, but he had spent much to do so.

Obi-Wan buried his head in his hands and cried, letting his emotions run as bright and dark as they wanted for several minutes before wrestling them into a facsimile of control. Anakin needed him. Luke and Leia needed him.

The ocean continued its eternal rhythm outside and the candles danced shadows on the wall as the older man calmed himself with slow, steady breathing and finally dried his tears with the sleeve of his tunic, composed once again if not calm. As he did, a soft vibration buzzed from Anakin's arm, the low hum of a com.

Obi-Wan glared at it as if it were a hideous insect, knowing from the old days - _when I commanded a ship, when the clones were my brothers, when all of this was so different -_ what this was.

 _A check-in from the ship in orbit. When he doesn't answer they'll send a scouting party. Depending on their orbit pattern and troop complement we'll have twenty or thirty minutes before they get here._

Obi-Wan took the wreck of his emotions and did his best to neatly box it up and set it aside, a chill ghosting through him as the com buzzed again. He ran his hands through the roughness of his beard and furiously tried to think, possibilities rising and falling in split-second arcs as he sank back into old habits finely honed by years of war. _Wake him up to answer? No. He won't be coherent even if I can get him awake. Carry him back? No, there is no way I can carry him back all that way. Stay? No. Alone I can't take on a scouting party that will be expecting hostiles._

 _Let them take him back?_

 _No._

Frustrated, he took a deep breath and tried to center himself inside a still ring of calm, one that had once been so easy to find it was almost second-nature. _Look. Don't think. Just look._ He took in the warmth of Anakin lying next to him, the light scent of salt from the sea outside, and the rough weave of the rug beneath him.

Standing, Obi-Wan tried to move past those impressions to take in all of his surroundings, subconsciously avoiding the shape of Padme just past Anakin, focusing instead on the simple cups tilted out on the floor before moving through the other roughly-hewn rooms lit by meager candlelight.

They had lived simply, he thought without allowing himself to focus too much on all of the people that "they" encompassed. Sleeping quarters, a bare-bones refresher, and what was probably a kitchen, with tall stacks of boxed supplies along the far wall. Those caught his eye just as he was about to lean back out of the room, and he remained, studying them from the doorway.

 _They wouldn't have trusted any traders enough to invite them here. So they had to have gone out to buy them and then brought them here themselves from the ship Luke and Leia are in right now._

 _That means there's a speeder of some kind either here or back in the hangar._ Anakin's com sounded again from back where he lay, a low warning hum. _They're still trying to get in touch with him. We don't have much time._

 _Please let that speeder be here._

Precious minutes burned away as Obi-Wan searched the smaller caves that the main rooms led off into and then rushed outside, almost tripping over the bodies strewn in front of the door, to see if there were any overhangs or rocks further down the beach a speeder could be hidden in.

When he rounded the corner of one rough collection of boulders within sight of the cave, relief came in a swift, bone-deep wave. The dim fireflies of metal plates glinting in starlight showed the outline of a home speeder, a beast-of-burden utility model used for hauling and other simple projects. It was neither beautiful nor new, but as Obi-Wan started it up and swung it around to float back down the sand toward the cave, he didn't care at all. _Now we have a chance._

Anakin's com was hissing again in a new pattern when Obi-Wan came back, the dull, dead tone of stupid electronics demanding an answer, and he ignored it as he lifted and then slung Anakin over his shoulders with a grunt of effort. _I need to get rid of that, but not here. I don't want to lead them straight to her._

Obi-Wan gave one last, sorrowful nod to the woman now alone, her body facing away from them, which made it seem she was merely asleep in the orange glow of the candles. _I am sorry I failed you, Padme. I swear I will protect Luke and Leia to my dying breath._ The idea of setting fire to the place, of leaving nothing behind to be found in the case of a search operation, had occurred to him as he'd frantically hunted for the speeder, but there was no time. By Obi-Wan's calculations they had at best another fifteen or so minutes before the scouting party would arrive.

With a last, unspoken farewell to Padme, Obi-Wan set out, carefully working his way through the doorways with his ungainly burden until they were out on the sand where he'd parked the speeder. He clumsily slipped the younger man down to lie across the wide flat back of the vehicle where boxes or parts usually went, his body landing with a thud and rocking the speeder a little.

Anakin stirred, mumbling something incoherent, but Obi-Wan had no time to listen and threw himself into the pilot's seat, gearing the thrusters up and setting off down the beach.

The night was silent, only the sound of the waves and the motor, and Obi-Wan kept watch in the night sky for the telltale comet of a drop ship. None had appeared yet, and he risked pulling the speeder over when they were almost back to the hangar, nothing but beach stretching either way.

Anakin was struggling to wake up, half-formed words slipping free as Obi-Wan dragged him upright and shifted his legs to hang over the side of the levitating speeder.

His whole body limp, he had no choice but to lean against Obi-Wan as the Jedi began methodically stripping off Anakin's boots. Beyond the standard-issue com itself, the Republic had often required its Jedi to hide away another tracking device somewhere in their robes and the former General Kenobi was sure the Empire would have kept that little rule in place for its glorious poster boy.

The boots tumbled down into the sand, the left glove and then right one following, Obi-Wan having no time to show deference to the bare, harsh reality of Anakin's cybernetic hand. He'd seen it so little of it during their years together, Anakin always keeping it covered, that of all the surrealness of this moment, it stood out the most. He tried to put the cold metal out of his mind as he dropped the hand back into Anakin's lap.

The cloak came next, large enough it took a small fight to pry it away, and then Obi-Wan tugged off Anakin's belt. It and his Imperial saber slid away to clunk down in an ungainly pile on the beach, and Obi-Wan glared at the metal hilt as it went. _Hideous thing._

Anakin was trying to speak, his mouth warm and close to Obi-Wan's ear as the Jedi stood shouldered against the weak bulk of his body, but Obi-Wan shook his head and whispered to Anakin to be quiet as he stripped away the sleek leather guards and tabards the Imperial designers had made for the great and terrible Lord Vader.

Reaching back to grab at Anakin's outer tunic, Obi-Wan jerked his hand away as if the soft linen had bit him. _What was that?_ Something very wrong, something that defied his understanding of the world, was lurking there under the layered collars, shaped like a stone but bleeding energy that tasted like poison around the edges. It frightened him.

 _I need to get rid of this thing, whatever it is._

Steeling himself much in the same way he did before battles, Obi-Wan thrust his hand inside the shirt and grabbed the source of his sharp unease from an inner pocket. The time it took him to yank his fist back out and then throw it hard to the ground was only a second, but in his mind a long, bizarre minute passed as he watched his body move in slow motion.

 _Find_ , a raspy voice said, slithering through him and halting only at the edge of the Light that surrounded Obi-Wan. _Who do you want to find?_

The answer came before he could stop himself, the line to his subconscious much shorter here than outside in the physical world. _Ahsoka Tano. She could help us._ He regretted it as soon as he said it, casting out his mind to recall the words before the thing waiting in the dark could hear them, but it was too late.

At the same time, he realized Anakin was somehow next to him here in this strange, incorporeal world that existed between moments, and that the unseen creature feared him.

 _Find her,_ Anakin demanded, his spirit's voice much weaker than usual in his current state but still frighteningly compelling. Obi-Wan cringed at the flicker of power that grew from his former Padawan's words, unfurling like ash and smoke from a fire.

 _Find her. Find Ahsoka Tano_ , it repeated. Obi-Wan felt the stars above the beach shifting around him, like a child spinning a hologlobe with the surface view turned on, the entire sky above grinding around in a slow whirl of black and veins of dim white.

It drifted back into its proper place, all the stars back where they should be, in the time it took Obi-Wan to draw back his arm out in the real world and throw. One word came crawling out to the shades of Obi-Wan and Anakin as the talisman broke contact with Obi-Wan's hand and shot down to bounce across the folds of the discarded cloak. _Rusata._

Time returned to its normal pace with a lack of ceremony: Anakin lost consciousness again, slumping heavily against Obi-Wan, and the Jedi planted his boot more firmly in the sand to keep them both upright, the name taunting him. _The Rusata star cluster? She's there? How would that thing know that?_

He understood on a deep, instinctual level how it knew, his Force training filling in the unpleasant blanks to a certain extent, but there was no time to consider it further now. It was gone, and he was glad for it.

Furiously pulling Anakin's tunics off and tossing them aside, Obi-Wan cursed as he heard the faint, low drone of a ship entering the atmosphere above them somewhere in the night. He pushed Anakin back as gently as he could to lay him down and slung Anakin's legs back up on the speeder, the younger man barefoot and shirtless and far less intimidating than he had been. They flew off in a rumble down the beach, leaving the undignified pile of fabric and leather behind on the damp sand.

It was another harrowing few minutes of wind and noise back to the hangar, Anakin soon draped over his shoulders once again and hauled up to the open doors of the ship, the children already alerted by the Force to their approach and waiting for them.

Leia stood there, Luke behind her, her hand on the door control as she watched Obi-Wan pound up the ramp inside. "Close the door, Leia!" he said as he jogged by, kneeling to drop Anakin down into one of the empty chairs.

"Get to your seats! Did the ship finish start-up?" he asked them, snapping buckles into place across Anakin's bare waist and chest, the heavy lines of straps covering up the fainter ones of scars that traced all along him. Anakin didn't stir, whatever black arts that unnatural stone had required no doubt taking the last of his reserves.

"It all turned green," Luke offered.

"Good. That's good," Obi-Wan said, nodding reassuringly to Luke as the little boy fussed with his belts. "Here, let me help you."

Over the clicks of the buckles, Luke whispered with wide eyes, "Is Papa alive?"

"Of course he is," Leia interrupted, rushing to her own seat and flopping into it with the force only the very young can manage. "Can't you feel him?"

"Yes, he is. And he needs our help. But first we have to get out of here," Obi-Wan said in his best soothing voice as he made sure she was buckled in properly as well. "Don't try to go into his mind, Luke. Not right now. Please."

Luke nodded, never looking away from the man strapped in just a few feet from him. There was a little fear, but mostly open fascination, and the Jedi wondered in the back of his mind if this was the first time he'd seen not only his father, but any man other than Obi-Wan in real life.

Hurrying back and sitting with a thump in the main pilot's chair, Obi-Wan hit the switches to draw up the ramp outside and initiate the auto-launch mode, which rattled the ship as the engines spun up higher and lifted them from the rocky hangar floor.

The vessel turned slowly, carefully, a large and clumsy insect searching for a way out into the night, and then they were outside, gliding up and out across the ocean, away from the shore that had been all the two children on the ship had ever known.

Tense, knowing nothing was ever a given in life, Obi-Wan glanced back at Anakin's unconscious form and then Luke and Leia, who were both staring in delight at the tiny, moonlit waves below as the ship banked and settled into its flight path. Giving them an encouraging smile before turning back, the expression dropping back into one of deep concentration, Obi-Wan confirmed the numbers in front of him and boosted the thrusters, everyone sinking back into their seats as the engines sent them screaming upward into the sky.

Sensors were minimal in transport ships, but even they were programmed to sense other ships to avoid collisions in mid-orbit. As they sped higher over the sea, the roar of the engines the beautiful sound of escape, the Imperial ship blinked into sensor view on the other side of the planet, a burning red dot Obi-Wan thanked the Force was so far away it had no way of catching up with them before they hit hyperspace.

Searching, fingers flying over the keys as the ocean and then the atmosphere fell away to reveal the jet-black crispness of space and stars, he selected the default node for the Rusata cluster and slapped the command key with his palm.

Everything fell away into a beautiful stream of blue and white.


	15. Questions

As consciousness returned to him in dreamy, soft washes of color and light, Anakin's first thoughts tumbled in, confused and impossible to follow at first.

 _Dead. Light. Alone. Not alone._

"Anakin."

 _Obi-Wan._ Anakin blinked and tried to focus on him, finding his body oddly unable to respond as he tried to sit up. Was he wounded? He didn't feel the usual ache of injuries, but he did feel awful, both in body and spirit. That was immediately apparent even in his dazed state.

He tried to fathom what was wrong with both, and the only certainty he could find in the jumble was that he was sad. No, he faintly understood as dim outlines of ideas began to swim into view, ghostly behemoths in a black ocean. This ache was far beyond that, and it might never stop.

Something had happened that had ripped his heart in half and eaten the remains bloody and raw, something lurking just around the corner of his confusion, waiting to spring out and finish off the man with a hole where that heart used to be. The kinder parts of his soul tried to steer him away from pursuing that line of thinking any further, but his mind raced along, speeding around that corner directly into the teeth of what waited.

 _Padme._

Seated next to Anakin, Obi-Wan put down the datapad he'd been studying and watched him wake with a grim expression, able to follow Anakin's mental ascent back into the world of the living through the way the Force wavered around him. It was easy to tell when he recognized his former master's voice, his eyes darting around for him, and it was far easier to tell when he recalled the gruesome evening that had led to his current condition. Obi-Wan put a hand down on Anakin's bare chest, hoping the warmth of it would soothe him a little, and waited for the tears.

They didn't come. Anakin took in a long, rattling breath and let it out, staring blindly up at the ceiling as the magnitude, the weight of what had happened crushed him into pained silence that he didn't break for a long, agonized stretch of minutes. He lay there, wordless, only the gentle movement of his chest and the occasional blink showing he was alive as he dimly worked through the half-remembered horrors of the recent past. With each memory regained, the Force tightened itself further into sharp, jagged agony around him, and Obi-Wan quietly waited for him to return to the present and ask the question that would show he was truly awake and aware of his surroundings.

"Why am I tied down?"

At the sad, resigned sound of his words, Obi-Wan let out the breath he had been holding and tried to calm the rough edges of Anakin's Force presence with the calm, still air of his own. "I didn't know what you would do when you woke up, Anakin."

 _What am I going to do?_

 _She's gone. I was supposed to go with her._ The clean, simple lines of the ceiling taunted Anakin with the fact this world still had him when his beloved was no longer here. The loss he had mourned for years had only just become real, but this time there was no hatred, no misdirected rage at anyone else and there would be no long nights spent wondering how to best get his bloody revenge against the one who had wronged her.

This time there was only guilt, profound as an abyss and just as black with the terrible knowledge that he, Anakin Skywalker, was the cause of her death. _Not just her death, her suffering and her madness for years beforehand. Years._

There were other thoughts beyond her, stealing in to feed off of his anguish, images of battles he'd won for the Empire, of the systems he'd subdued, of the countless people he had slaughtered at a mere word from Sidious. Grief brought clarity where once it had obscured, and he saw the long, terrible line of people who had suffered at the hands of Lord Vader.

Just thinking the name made his stomach turn with disgust. _What have I become?_

The answer chilled him, and led to another puzzle as the memory of the acrid taste of the tea tightened his throat. _I should be dead._

 _Is it my punishment to live?_ Those unnerving yellow eyes focused on Obi-Wan, the pain behind them for now an endless field of shattered glass and dangerous to no one save the man trapped in the middle of it. "Where are we?" Anakin asked weakly, looking around the small sleeping quarters.

"On a small ship heading to the Rusata cluster. You, I, and your children. They are in the other sleeping room."

 _My children._ Humiliation and a deep need colored Anakin's next words. "Please don't let them see me like this."

"I won't," Obi-Wan said quietly, hand on Anakin's chest as he assessed his honesty and intent through the Force. He nodded to the door, sensing it was safe for the time being to continue with this line of conversation. "They are very interested in you."

"What did Padme tell them about me?"

A million kinder responses came to mind, but Obi-Wan felt he was owed the truth. "Nothing that isn't true."

Anakin closed his eyes, trying to will away the tremble in his voice. "I swear I will not hurt them. You… you sensed it on the beach when I saw them." _I have to see them. I don't deserve to but I don't care. Our children. Her children._

Obi-Wan studied Anakin as he returned to the beach left far behind, the scene easy to recall given how little time had passed, and considered the dark river of his own feelings about what had happened. "Will you hurt me?" he asked, his mind able to deduce the answer from Anakin's tortured expression but his weak, human heart needing to hear it anyway.

"No. I swear."

Anakin's defeated tone begged Obi-Wan for understanding, for mercy even though he knew he had no right to any, and Obi-Wan let his hand fall away, but made no move to undo the unseen knots that bound Anakin to what he now realized was a small bunk pulled down from the wall. Obi-Wan's face was impassive as he watched him, but his eyes were dark with emotion, almost the slate grey of a thunderstorm.

For the first time since their parting on Mustafar, Anakin saw his master's face without bloodlust clouding his vision. It shocked him.

 _You look so old, so tired and hopeless… I ruined you. Just like I did Padme._ "Obi-Wan, I am so-"

Anger flared through their newly repaired bond, the glimpse of a well of feeling that seemed to run deep enough a dozen men could drown in it. "Don't. There is not a word that exists that would encompass everything you have done in your selfishness, Anakin. If you truly feel that way, then do not ever say that word to me."

Anakin sank back into the makeshift bonds around his hands and legs, stunned.

"If you truly feel that way, then never speak of it. Show it. To me and to your children and to everyone else you betrayed and hurt." Obi-Wan looked away, jaw clenched as the Force around him toppled down onto Anakin, filled with five years of agony and despair.

"I…" There were no images, only sensations, and Anakin walked with Obi-Wan through empty deserts and uncaring city crowds and the tight confines of countless ships. Alone. Always alone. So much guilt, and anger. So much to bear alone.

 _Like me. Except I caused all of mine._ He thought of Obi-Wan, and his children, and how he had torn worlds apart in his grief at losing all of them. Through his own stupid pride and arrogance.

The urge to blame Sidious rose, but Anakin coldly turned that idea away as it scrabbled for purchase. _He took control of me because I gave him control. He didn't use anything that wasn't already there when he made Vader._

 _Is it too late to stop Vader?_ Could he turn away from Sidious, leave behind his empire and that pretty map of white and red lights that showed how much of the galaxy was his?

His mind turned to Padme, of what he had done to her, and of his children, five years grown while Anakin mourned them, rampaging through systems at Sidious's command and terrifying his own beloved wife into attempting his murder.

He didn't know if he could, if the blackness that he'd welcomed could be rejected once let inside, but he had to try. "I will not go back. My days as Vader are over."

Obi-Wan shook his head, rubbing at his temples and visibly torn between shouting at him and taking the higher road, the Master Kenobi road.

Anakin wished he would shout, and scream, and hit him.

But Obi-Wan only drew a deep, deep breath, forcing the worst of his pain behind a spiritual dam doomed to break later. "Always so quick with your words, Anakin. With your emotions. I should have sensed how easy it was for Palpatine to lead you around on a string. And that… that is my fault. I failed you in that, Anakin. In protecting you from him."

 _How can you possibly think any of this is your fault?_ "No. No one made me… become this."

"But someone let you. I let you. We both have much to atone for." Obi-Wan was gazing sadly down into his eyes, and Anakin felt another horrible, bottomless humiliation open up inside, knowing he was looking at their color. Anakin's eyes slid away, but the silent, still gaze of his former master pulled him back, and he stared up at Obi-Wan bound, ashamed, and mortified.

One last question came to him from Obi-Wan, drifting through on the low hum of the Force and wearing the terrible, sharp black wings of certainty. His reply would determine what happened next, and as ragged as his mind was they both knew a lie would be known instantly. _Are you Anakin Skywalker, widower and father, or are you Lord Vader, powerful ruler of the Empire? You cannot be both._

Anakin resisted the gut urge to respond immediately and forced himself to think about it, about the power and glory of being the Lord of the Empire, of how satisfied he had felt every time he had donned the black of his position and gone to slay those who had dared to defy him. It called to him even now in the throes of his torment: the sweet, vicious thrill of power unfettered and selfish, bending the whole galaxy to his will.

 _Ruling means nothing without my family,_ he said without words and the temptation of Vader fell away, leaving a strange, painful hollowness inside that reformed spice-addicts would understand. Anakin wondered if that craving would always be there, weakened and lame but still whispering to him when the trials of his new life pressed down on him.

 _I am Anakin Skywalker. I will never be Lord Vader again._

Obi-Wan nodded, only once, and the words that came next were more of a primal truth than a coherent vow, but the two understood in the darkest corners of their souls what they meant. _If you bring harm to your children, I will end you._

 _Never_ , Anakin replied, his resolve iron and immovable, and the two sat quietly for some time as the promise echoed and faded into the first nascent beginnings of trust between them after so long without.

"Would you like to meet them?"

"Yes." The tears finally came, threatening to overwhelm him, and Obi-Wan adjusted something around his waist with a faint click before he stood and reached over to undo his bonds. As Anakin sat up he recognized that familiar sound with ice sharp in his gut: Obi-Wan had had his saber out on his lap the entire time. Just in case his awakening had gone… differently.

 _He will never trust me again. My own Master, my real Master, who only ever wanted to help me, and I broke it._

 _I broke us._

A few tears of sorrow mixed in with the ones of joy as Anakin scrubbed at his face, taking the simple shirt Obi-Wan offered him from one of the supply boxes lining the wall of the room. All of his clothes were gone, it seemed. Even his saber.

He didn't care.

"Luke and Leia," he murmured to himself, attempting to focus on them, combing his hands through his hair as he swung his legs over the side of the bunk and tried to brush away a wrinkle from where the shirt had been folded. The image of the little twin flames on the beach and their silhouettes in the twilight came to him, and then the ugly realization their first look at him had been at the same time. A towering monster in Imperial black, red saber lit and with murderous intent staining the Force around him, standing on the same beach they must have played on a thousand times.

Anakin wished desperately, not for the first time in his life, for a droid heart, a cold and regulated thing that would not let him grasp what a truly worthless, horrid creature he was.

Eyes downcast, trying to prepare himself, he heard the door slide open and the soft, hesitant approach of a small pair of feet. Leia's Force presence floated ahead of her, a wave of guarded curiosity radiating from the little girl. And then another joined it, Luke's presence overlapping hers with the same cautious excitement. Both of them came to stand in front of him, and he still couldn't look up any higher than their tiny feet.

"You're not afraid of me?" he whispered to the floor, stunned at the lack of real fear in their minds as they nudged against his. Obi-Wan was there too, leaning in the doorway but his steadying Force touch there in Anakin's soul, centering him as it had in days long gone by.

"No. You don't feel like Mama when she was mad at us," Luke explained.

Anakin glanced up at the strange comparison, puzzled. "Mad at you? Why would she have been mad at you?"

Luke gaped at him, his eyes as blue as Anakin's had once been, his blond hair fine and bright in the cold ship lights. "Why are your eyes yellow? Mama never said you had yellow eyes."

Anakin's gaze fell back to his feet, searching for what to say when Leia cut in. "He's a dragon. Remember? That's what Mama said he was."

"I… I am." He was suddenly very young again, a slave on Tatooine singing an old song about dragons in the suns with the other boys and girls hauling water. Dragons had been power and freedom, beautiful and terrifying to the young child of Shmi Skywalker.

Somewhere a chime rang in the ship, but Obi-Wan remained where he was, tilting his head and with a touch of the Force asking if Anakin wanted them taken out of the room. Anakin shook his head, clearing away the song and the sands of his homeworld. He was a dragon, he decided, one of the cursed death-bringers in the stories the slave children had whispered about after the suns had left the sky and there was only night outside of their hovels.

 _They will come to hate me._

Here, in the sterile metal planes of a ship far away from that planet and life, Luke came closer, touching Anakin's leg and his curiosity brushing Anakin's mind. "Will I get dragon eyes too? That's what Mama would say when she was really mad. That we'd turn into you."

Disbelief wiped away the last lingering memories of Tatooine, and Anakin stared at Luke. "No. Never."

Leia joined Luke, hand resting on Anakin's other leg. She was as dark in coloring as Luke was light, so like her mother Anakin felt another shard of himself break off and sink into blackness, never to be seen again. She took Luke's hand, completing a ghostly chain between the three of them, and whispered something through the Force to the boy, either unaware Anakin could hear or not caring.

 _He's safe. He won't hurt us._

Anakin heard this simple declaration travel the link from Leia to Luke, the girl strong and confident. He felt Luke's relief in the Force and the warmth of their small hands outside of it, and he tentatively reached down to cover theirs with his own in a comforting squeeze. _I won't_ , he offered, watching with desperate hope as they turned from each other to him. _Please don't be afraid of me._

"Papa?" Luke's spirit continued where his words left off, articulating itself through images that almost hurt in their strength as Leia joined in, the raw hope that had created them unbelievably intense in the way only small children can be.

The three of them hugging. Sleeping safely in the sun. A dragon, fierce and black with yellow eyes, curled around the two children, protecting them. _Will you stay? Will you be our papa? Will you keep us safe?_

Anakin nodded, the tears from earlier returning to stream down his face, and the children threw themselves into his arms to hug him tightly, their instincts about him the only reassurance they needed. Stunned, he slowly slid his arms around them, pulling them in close as gently as if they were made of glass and staring up at Obi-Wan in befuddled shock.

 _How can they trust me, Master?_

Mentally wincing, Obi-Wan tried to ignore the title and the infinite sadness it brought, sure that Anakin wasn't aware it had slipped out in the confused haze of his thinking. _They know there is still some good in you, Anakin. As do I._

Anakin let out a soft cry at this, kissing the tops of the twins' heads and holding them tight as Obi-Wan turned and left, the chime calling to him once again from elsewhere in the ship.


	16. Temptation

Obi-Wan stood over the control board, leaning against it and studying the pulsing green button that had set off the chime a moment ago. He was exhausted, physically and spiritually, and all he wanted was to meditate and sleep.

There was no emergency. A flashing pattern like the one he was seeing on a button in this section of the control board was in almost all modern ships an indicator that the temperature controls had adjusted to deep space cold. It would be easy to press it and dismiss the alert. But something crept along the edge of his mind, a subtle unease, and he remained staring at the neat square of light, mind wandering as he tried to track down what the stray thought was.

 _I have many reasons to be ill at ease_ , he thought with no small amount of sarcasm even as he reached out into the Force to still himself and find the calm waters that waited for him there. Today they rippled with agitation, but Obi-Wan slipped past the surface and down into the relative quiet beneath.

There was one thought in that space that was everywhere and nowhere all at once, clear and bright and undeniable. _We are in danger._

He resisted every biting observation that came to mind, and instead pressed ahead with the feeling, knowing better than to question intuition laced with the Force. _We are in danger? Who is we? The children and I?_

Obi-Wan understood in another flash that he was wrong: all four of them were in danger, but it felt as if whatever this was, it was not an instant, immediate threat. No malfunctioning hyperdrive, no ambush awaiting them when they dropped out of hyperspace. Something more insidious was waiting for them in the future, and it would find them.

"Find us," Obi-Wan murmured, snapping out of his trance as the chime rang again. He jabbed it off, spinning to hurry back into the sleeping quarters he'd left Anakin and his children in.

Luke and Leia were still in Anakin's arms, his metal hand dark and glinting in Luke's blond hair as he stroked it and whispered to them gently.

Anakin looked up as he came in, sensing Obi-Wan's anxiety through the tiny crack that had reopened in the mental wall between them, and the children wriggled around to face him as well. "What is it?"

"How did you find me?"

"I," Anakin looked down at Luke and Leia, struggling for words. "I used an old talisman the Emperor gave me. You saw it, didn't you? I don't really remember what happened, but I remember standing next to you in the dark."

Obi-Wan frowned at the memory, just thinking about the bizarre episode allowing an oil slick of dark emotions to pour back into his mind. "How does it work? Specifically?"

"If you meditate on a Jedi with it long enough, maybe just a Force user, I think, you can find exactly where they are." Anakin sat Luke and Leia down, and they left the room without question, raised by their mother to be respectful when adults had the sort of look on their faces Obi-Wan had and when they talked in these sorts of tones. Once they had left and the door slid shut he leaned back against the wall the bunk lay up against, trying to understand Obi-Wan's dread. "I know it's wrong. Bring it to me and I swear I'll destroy it."

Obi-Wan ignored his offer, fists curling at his sides. "Could Sidious use it to find me? Or you?"

"Well, yes, I think, if he had it. But you have it-" Obi-Wan stared at him, fear and anger hardening his gaze, and Anakin's words died away until they were almost inaudible. "Where is it?"

"It's back on the beach. With all of your other Imperial items I stripped you of to make sure there were no trackers brought onboard." A dry, hopeless laugh escaped Obi-Wan as he realized the grand irony of what he'd done. "I've doomed us. Once your men find it and take it back to Sidious he won't hesitate to track us down."

"No." Anakin shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. "It's there? It can't be there! He can't get it back!" And then what they both had already grasped but neither wanted to say aloud. "We have to go back."

"Go back there where your ship and your clones are? Are you insane?" Obi-Wan pressed his hand to his forehead and fought back a sudden headache clawing to life inside his skull.

"How long has it been? Since we left?"

"A, a couple of hours."

Anakin nodded, trying to convince himself this could work. "They'll stay planetside for a couple of days waiting for me to show back up. They're used to me going off alone on missions."

"Luke and Leia, Anakin. It's not safe to take them back there." In Obi-Wan's glare as he lowered his hand from his face, Anakin felt a trace of doubt, the whisper of experience saying that Anakin was not to be completely trusted, that this might be some sort of trick by a man who had, upon further thought, had decided Vader made a better title than Skywalker.

It infuriated Anakin, but he let that fire burn itself out into resignation before he spoke again. He had earned, at the very least, unending suspicion. "If Sidious gets that talisman back, they won't ever be safe with us."

A sharp rage surged from Obi-Wan to Anakin, the sudden, clear image of his fist slamming into Anakin's cheek. It was so clear Anakin flinched before he saw Obi-Wan hadn't moved, and the agitated halo of the Force around him hadn't coalesced into an attack.

Nothing had happened. He wondered in shock if his time in the Dark had made him more sensitive to thoughts like this, given him a glimpse into baser feelings Obi-Wan would never consciously admit to. _I deserve that and worse, old friend. I know that. And one day I'll let you hit me until I'm dead, if that's what you want._

 _But not today_ , he thought as he clenched his jaw and did his best to pretend nothing had happened. "We have to go back."

His former master was perfectly still, fists uncurling with clear effort and his blue-grey eyes staring at a distant point only he could see as he tried to center himself in the Force. "This is madness."

"Just give me a minute. Please." _I like puzzles, right?_ He tried in vain to see it that way, as just another puzzle, another mission, but the lingering auras of his children and Obi-Wan hung around him, feeding the worry already racing through him. _If this goes wrong, Sidious will kill all three of them. Or worse, he'll raise Luke and Leia as his own._

Closing his eyes, trying to block out that horrible possibility, he hurriedly arranged the pieces on the board of his mind as he had done so many times before. "It's a small Tracker-class light running cruiser with only one dropship. Just me, a squad, and the ship crew. 16 or 17 men in all." He took a breath, held it, and let it out. "We come in on the shadow side of the planet, out of the main ship's sensor range. We radio ahead to the dropship on the ground, land on the beach as close as we can to the search party there and I go out to talk to them. Tell them you surprised me and kidnapped me, but I killed you and made my way back. Once I get my things I tell them I need to inspect your ship for evidence and I'll rejoin them at the dropship when I'm done."

Obi-Wan hated how logical the idea sounded. The more flawless a battle plan sounded, the worse it usually went in the field. "Will they even listen to you?"

"They fear me." The pride Anakin once felt in this statement was gone. In the emptiness left behind lurked only sadness. "They'll listen."

His next question surprised Anakin with its apparent randomness. "Do I know any of these clones?"

"None of..." He almost said "our" and caught himself, this frantic and desperate planning with Obi-Wan bringing back too many memories of the Clone Wars. "None of the original 212th and 501st are still around. They were lost a few years ago in separate sieges."

Obi-Wan looked away, clearly fighting his own remembrances of the past. "No sympathy for an old General, then."

Now Anakin understood why he'd asked. "They will show you none if they find you. They are the Emperor's, through and through. He rotates them out so I never have a chance to know any of them more than a month at a time."

Pressing his hands to his face, breath hot as he sighed into his palms, Obi-Wan pushed them up through his hair. "Is there no other way? Do we have to do this?"

"Yes."

"The children…"

"They take that thing back to Sidious, and we will have to leave them with strangers and get as far away from them as we can. Of course," Anakin said, his loathing gnawing on him before lashing out at Obi-Wan for the imagined violence of earlier, "even if we do, once Sidious finds us and discovers they exist, which he will find out when he tortures us, and he will most definitely torture us, he will go and find them anyway. Nowhere in the galaxy will be safe for them unless we get the talisman back."

He had no right to be angry with Obi-Wan for hitting him, but he was. Sidious's evil was a daily, unshakable reality for him, as dependable as the sun rising, and even though he hated himself for a brief moment he was glad to see Obi-Wan's shocked face at what he heard. This sort of depravity would be relatively new to Obi-Wan, the perfect Jedi that Anakin had never been and would never be.

Then shame flooded in, and Anakin looked away as Obi-Wan did the same. When their eyes met again he tried to offer a silent apology, but there was only the impassive grey gaze of his former master, weighing him and his idea.

It was an uncomfortable stretch of minutes before Obi-Wan spoke again, trying to convince himself there was any chance of success. "If your plan fails, we will have to fight. But," he gestured between them, "we cannot do it like this."

He waved his hand before bringing it up to rub at his temples, indicating the still air of the ship that howled out of balance in the Force like the winds of a sandstorm meeting a blizzard. Their two hearts and minds were out of sync in a way that once would have been unthinkable, his bitter mistrust set against Anakin's petty cruelty.

"I will set the ship to head back. And then we will meditate together. If we fight alone, we will die together. And for the sake of your children that cannot be allowed."

Anakin heard what Obi-Wan said and couldn't quite believe it. The idea that Obi-Wan was willing to touch his mind was in some ways more shocking than the trusting embrace of his children. There was apprehension that he would see what Anakin had become, the rot of corruption thick beneath his tanned skin. And the pathetic hope that there could be some small sort of bond between them once again. He could only nod, unable to voice any of this.

Obi-Wan gave a small, bone-dry chuckle of disbelief at the situation and slowly breathed in and out a few times, calming himself as much as he could before turning and walking out the door. It stayed open as he stood in it, leaning against the jamb. "Children," he heard Obi-Wan say. "It's time for bed, but would you like to play a game first?"

"Yes," they answered politely, one of them yawning from the sound of it. They sounded as tired as Obi-Wan was, their youthful energy only able to overcome the horrific events of the day for so long.

"We're going to play hide and seek," he said gently, kneeling to their height. Luke peered over his shoulder at Anakin, who tried to smile at him from where he sat. "Split up and find the best hiding place you can on this ship. You have fifteen minutes. Are you good at hide and seek? Can you do that?"

Leia said she and Luke played that game a lot and Obi-Wan nodded his approval, his auburn hair glinting in the ship lights. "When I go to the control board and you hear a chime, the game starts. I'll go back into your father's room and then we'll both come look for you in fifteen minutes."

"Ok," Luke said, yawning and stretching before waving shyly at his father. Obi-Wan stepped away and the door closed, leaving Anakin alone with only his doubts and uncertainty.

* * *

When Obi-Wan came back Anakin had brought his legs up to sit cross-legged on the narrow bed, frowning as he tried to track down and catch all of his stray emotions before they began. From his earliest years at the Temple he'd never cared for seated, still meditation, preferring a saber and a good host of training droids, and his second master had never encouraged sincere reflection on anything but grief.

"Hide and seek?" he asked, puzzled at Obi-Wan's timing for play.

Obi-Wan sank into the chair he'd sat in, facing Anakin, and dropped his hands into his lap, graceful in his movements for all of his weariness. "I want to see what places they choose. If they're good enough, we'll put them back there before we land. It will give them at least a little chance to avoid your men if they make it on board."

Ice water ran through Anakin, winter tracing a finger along his soul as he imagined himself and Obi-Wan dead, the soldiers carrying a screaming Luke and Leia off to their ship. To the Emperor.

Still planning, avoiding his own growing tension by lining up every detail as carefully as he could, Obi-Wan murmured, "Before you ask, yes, we would need days to properly repair our bond. Or weeks. Maybe months." He held out his hand in an offer to Anakin, the left so that Anakin could take it with his own warm one rather than cold durasteel. "But we don't have that time and I don't think it would be wise to let our minds linger together that long until you have had some time away from your... previous influences."

Anakin said nothing, the wildfire of his humiliation rising higher, and reached out to press his palm against Obi-Wan's. They had done this sort of short-term meditation before when Anakin was young enough to wear a padawan braid and he was upset about something that, to his older self, was incredibly stupid and short-sighted. And, while it didn't work as well and perfectly as it used to, it worked well enough: the heat of Obi-Wan's palm against his skin set the first thin support in place, the first strut in a fragile bridge between them.

"Do you remember this?" Obi-Wan asked, voice thick with exhaustion.

"Yes."

"Good. First the bridge, then the link." He led their breathing, steady pulses of air in and out, their eyes closing as the steady rhythm fought the erratic, discordant jangle of the air around them. Anakin felt his anxiety begin to retreat as they did, one tiny piece at a time carried away by each exhalation of his breath that wasn't followed by Obi-Wan recoiling from him.

When Obi-Wan had explained this particular focusing image long ago, he'd said the two of them were like opposite banks of a river. If one were quicksand and the other jagged rocks no bridge could ever be built. Anakin heard his master, much younger, say, _To make a bridge you must be calm and whole and at peace with the world. Steady, firm ground. Able to hold the weight of anything placed upon it._

Given that young Anakin had never stepped over a trail of liquid larger than that left by a broken oil line in his pod, the river and bridge analogy had proven quite successful because both things existed in his mind more as concepts than anything in reality, no matter how many he stared at or walked or rode across later in life. But Obi-Wan's side of the bridge had always been ready faster than his, awaiting with infinite patience the settling of whatever rocks or earthquakes had beset the other side.

Older now, so much older and sitting in borrowed clothes given to him by the master he'd tried to kill, Anakin tried as hard as he could to return to that time, to cast away his thoughts and become still and calm enough Obi-Wan would be able to reach him.

Doubt pressed in, but the touch of Obi-Wan's hand pressed to his kept it back just far enough Anakin could keep his tenuous connection with himself, a fragile balancing of his conscious and unconscious mind.

As he felt stillness take hold, just enough to let him see beyond himself, he realized Obi-Wan was struggling just as much as him. Possibly more. Obi-Wan's side of the river, still lost in mist, heaved with unknown pressures and shapes, feelings hidden but not driven away.

Anakin hesitantly twined his fingers through Obi-Wan's as he recognized the silhouette of one of the monstrous passions that plagued him, trying to comfort him. _Fear. He's afraid… of himself?_

"Yes," Obi-Wan whispered, sounding half-asleep. His thoughts rose high enough for Anakin to see. _I don't know how much more I can take before I give into the anger I have. It scares me. There's so much and I am only one person here in the dark._

"You aren't alone. Let me take some," Anakin whispered. "Please."

"No." Obi-Wan grimaced, eyes still closed, and the unnatural shadows in his mind sank back out of sight, forced down by the sheer weight of Obi-Wan's will. It was not perfect, cracked and worn, but it was firm enough for now, and the bridge appeared in both their minds, flimsy and weak but there nonetheless.

A long series of breaths, now even and regular, passed as Anakin waited before he tentatively reached out with his spirit, the Force a flickering dance of heat lightning all around them. There was nothing, no one waiting in the center of the invisible arch, and then there was.

Obi-Wan.

His real Master.

He was there, the gold of his soul duller than it used to be, but he was there, as true and powerful as any star.

Anakin stood next to him, his own soul onyx, the void of space, and yet here the black and the emptiness were not terrible things. They were simply opposites of what Obi-Wan was. And opposites needed each other to exist, to live in harmony with the Force and the universe.

The light needed the dark. It always would.

They regarded each other, through their link, their presences gradually mingling under this simple truth, and when the dark began to greedily pull on the light, as it always eventually did, the trance broke.

Obi-Wan opened his eyes and found Anakin's looking back, gaze soft with distance and something approaching serenity.

"It's a start," Obi-Wan breathed, pulling his hand away and standing.

"Yes." Anakin blinked, mind clearing, and sensed the storm around them had died down enough for now, sand drifts mingled with snow all around them.

"Come on. Let's go find your children," Obi-Wan said, tilting his head toward the door.

* * *

Luke and Leia had not been able to hide at all, the ship too small and compact for even their small forms to disappear into, and when Anakin and Obi-Wan tried to couch this trip in casual, vague tones, that they had forgotten something important and that as soon as they got it they would leave, the twins were far too sensitive to the ragged edges of the Force floating around both to believe this was as easy as the adults were making it out to be. Frightened tears from both soon followed.

In the end Obi-Wan hugged them both and used what little peace he'd gained from his meditation with Anakin to lull them to sleep, comforting energy flowing from him to them until they nodded and dozed against him and he could carry them back to the sleeping bunks.

They were now huddled together in one, asleep deeply enough from his healing they didn't stir at all even when the hyperdrive gave its final approach alerts, two-tone chimes that echoed throughout the ship. Anakin had kissed their foreheads, sitting by them and smoothing their hair as the ten- and then five-minute chime sounded.

"We cannot lose," Obi-Wan had said, standing next to him, his hand on Anakin's shoulder. It was a vow and a plea, a promise and a doubt, and Anakin said nothing as he looked at Luke's fine eyelashes and Leia's fierce frown even as she slept.

When the ship dropped out of hyperspace and immediately swerved to dive into the atmosphere, Anakin and Obi-Wan were strapped into the pilot seats, Anakin flying while Obi-Wan sat in grim silence. An open medkit sat in Obi-Wan's lap, his tunic sleeve pushed back and a stim draining into the crook of his arm.

An empty dose sat in the bottom of the kit like an abandoned wasp nest, its sting still fresh on Anakin's arm as he lifted his hand to thumb on the com overhead. They were running far beyond empty, Anakin's miraculous return from the near-dead coming at a dear price for both of them, and Anakin had his second flashback of the day to the Clone Wars, when he and Obi-Wan would binge on stims for days during prolonged battles and then sleep for a week after all was said and done and the Republic flag flew high over whatever Force-forsaken city or swamp or forest they had been shipped out to that mission.

There had always been the slow return to reality, the grogginess and ache the stims left behind in the user's brain that felt like glass crackling every time one moved too fast during those first few days back off them. But Anakin and Obi-Wan had always managed to stumble out of their bunks or their rooms or their tents to find each other, instinct drawing them together to sit and meditate the worst of it away.

They had always been stronger together.

A few hours afterward, once enough coherent thought had returned to them, Anakin would usually make some off-color joke and Obi-Wan would usually snicker and that was their private signal they were ready to fight again, that it was time to help each other up to stumble off to whatever new insanity the Council had planned for them.

 _Did we really do that? Was that really our life for so long?_

The com clicked open, the silence hollow and tinny. "Shuttle-Three-One-Five," he said, voice steadier than he felt, "This is IA-1 calling Shuttle-Three-One-Five."

"Shuttle-Three-One-Five here. IA-1, confirm location?"

"Small transport ship crossing eastern hemisphere now, returning to you. Location?"

"Where we touched down earlier, sir. What is the situation aboard your ship, sir? Are you all right?" There was no warmth in this question, only the basic confirmation of facts. Obi-Wan dropped the now-empty stim vial into the medkit and closed it as he put it back in its lock-slot under the chair, listening with curiosity to this man who sounded like his own former troopers and yet not. He could hear, the stim feeding the pulse of the Force echoing in his veins, the complete and total detachment there.

Anakin was right. These clones would show no mercy to either of them if Anakin couldn't pull off what he promised.

"Yes. I was attacked but have neutralized the threat and gained control of the ship."

"Yes, sir. What is the plan? Should we call back the search party?"

"Yes, but maintain your position on the ground so I can meet you there. Have you found anything yet?"

"Your lightsaber and other items, sir. Also, there are three dead women in a cave roughly two klicks up the shore from our current position. Blaster wounds and what looks like poison."

The hiss of the atmosphere scraping along the ship plating filled the cockpit, and there was a pause as Anakin stared straight ahead, not daring to look over at Obi-Wan for fear his voice would crack. "I know. I killed them." He swallowed and focused on a single blue line of buttons at eye level, intent on their square edges and faded color. "Burn them and everything inside that cave. I want nothing left. And bring my things to me when I land."

Obi-Wan mouthed a silent recitation of the Code, staring up at the ceiling and praying to the Force and his own Master for strength.

"Yes, sir. When should we expect you?"

Anakin did not move save a flick of his metal hand across a set of switches, his answer uncaring and aloof though pain filled his eyes. "Soon. Are you in com with J-184?"

"No, sir. It just passed to the far side an hour ago. With no Imperial satellites in place this far out in the Rim we're out of touch for another… 87 standard minutes. Soonest return arc for the dropship… 98 standard minutes."

"Understood. Maintain your position. I'll be there soon."

"Yes, sir."

He flicked the com off, and they sat in silence as the ship sliced through clouds made pink by the weak light of dawn, engines rumbling as they dropped down to the flat-topped islands and long stretch of beach neither had ever wanted to see again.

"Anakin?" Obi-Wan asked quietly, the stim grinding through him with ruthless efficiency, scouring away the faint rim of sleep that had tried to settle in around him and leaving his nerves raw and bright.

"Yes?"

"Are you prepared to kill these men?"

"To keep Luke and Leia and you safe? Yes. I would kill a hundred men," Anakin muttered, and a sun flare erupted in the Force around him, a dark and violent promise of harm to anyone who touched them.

Obi-Wan watched it rise and recede, emotions stilted and strangely distant as he considered Anakin's words. "I pray it does not come to that."

* * *

The rumbling sound of waves rolled in from the right, echoing off the cliffs to the left, everything grey in the gloom just before sunrise as Anakin walked down the ramp still pushing itself down into the damp sand of the beach. He'd pulled off a landing Obi-Wan wouldn't have dared attempt, fitting the ship neatly along a slightly wider stretch of land closer to the cave, so tightly fit between the cliff and the ocean shallow waves lapped up against the struts on one side.

It would be a faster escape than trying to get out of the hangar, he'd said absently as his hands slid over the controls, nudging the ship down and into place as easily as the darker grey of smoke billowing from the cave smudged the brightening horizon before them. Neither had spoken about it even as it smeared itself across the dim sky, but Obi-Wan's eyes had never left it while the ship lowered itself and thumped to the ground with a groan of metal and gears.

Now Anakin, drawing up to his full height and trying to remember what it felt like to be afraid of no other man, a feeling that had been second-nature less than a day ago, stalked down and out toward the men approaching him from further up the beach. The dropship was a distinct shape crouched up on the flat plains at the top of the cliffs, further back and ringed in bright light.

 _Five. Assume three on… fire detail at the cave. That should leave two on the dropship. Standard back-up procedure if they have to leave suddenly._

 _Let's hope not._

The soldiers slowed as they reached him, lowering their weapons to at ease, and Anakin lifted his chin, hoping to overcome the less than intimidating impression he had to be giving: their superior left weaponless, barefoot and in a cheap, wrinkled tunic too big for him hanging down over his pants. He had stopped with the ship just a few strides behind him, Obi-Wan reminding him through the Force not to go too far ahead.

"Sir," the sergeant called, jogging up ahead first. "Do you need medical attention?"

"No. Where are my things?"

Two of the men wore large packs, and one dropped to his knees, swinging his around and opening it up. Anakin's cloak unfurled from inside, long swirls of ebony across the pale grey sand. He took it and flung it around his shoulders without comment, holding his hand out. The boots came next and were tugged on quickly, and then the gloves, the soldier on his knees digging in the pack and passing things up to Lord Vader as respectfully as he could.

When the soldier produced the tunic with the embroidered Imperial crest on it, Anakin waved his hand impatiently. "That's enough of the clothes. I can put all of that on later. He held out his hand again. "My saber and the black stone."

"Sorry, sir," the sergeant said from off to the side, where he'd been watching impassively.

"You don't have them?" Of the many things Anakin was feigning this morning, anger was not one of them, and two of the other men stepped away from the leader, not wanting that tone directed at them. "Where are they?"

The sergeant, who had only used his number designation when Anakin had met him for the first time last week before this mission, held his ground even if his voice shook a little through the mic in his helmet. "Emperor's orders, sir. When he found out you'd likely been… taken... he wanted them locked up for safekeeping on the dropship."

"Well, now I'm here. Get them."

"Sorry, sir. Can't do that." The other troopers were still now, hands tight on their weapons, waiting to see what Lord Vader would do at being refused. "He also said you weren't to get them back until he spoke to you."

Anakin realized with a furious, unspoken curse that he had overlooked a crucial fact: while his men were afraid of him, there was someone they feared more than him.

Much more.

He kept his face cold, raising a single eyebrow. "Did I not just hear before landing that we're out of com range with the ship for over an hour?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you intend to make me wait, then ride back up to the ship, and then speak with His Majesty, and then get back what belongs to me?"

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir, but while we're waiting the Emperor instructed us to search the ship as well if it came back."

Anakin felt his plan sliding out of his grasp, slipping away into the abyss, and tried to fight the panic that weighed it down. "I killed my target. There is nothing to search for." At least he sounded in control.

The sergeant shifted in place, boots sinking into the sand. "We still have to check, sir."

"No." Anakin looked around at all of them.

 _Five. I can do this._

 _I have to._

He lifted his hand and swept it from the sea to the cliffs, across all of them, the Force following in its wake and leaving a dark stain across their minds. "Bring me the stone."

They hesitated and then began to obey, the sergeant canting his head to the side and the others lowering their blasters all the way to the ground. And then pain shot through Anakin, hard and blinding and slamming the breath out of him as electricity savaged his nervous system.

Letting out a choked cry, he crashed to his side, gasping in agony. He knew what stun blaster bolts felt like from far too many unpleasant experiences, but as the pain rampaged through his mind and body he couldn't understand who had shot him. None of them had been anywhere close to aiming at him.

The sergeant, coming out of his daze and realizing what was happening, slammed the side of his helmet to activate his comlink. "He's still awake! Hit him again!"

The other soldiers were backing away and raising their weapons, Anakin's rage flooding out toward them as he ground his teeth and stumbled to one knee. "Sir?!" one called to the sergeant as the air grew heavy with the Force, just needing a little more coherent urging from Anakin to wrap around their throats.

"I don't care if it puts him in a coma! Hit him again!" the leader screamed into the com. Another bolt seared across Anakin's body, sending him down face-first in the sand with a loud moan but the furious, clawing hands of the Force still dragging along their necks. "Again, dammit! He can sleep all the kriff the way back to Coruscant for all I care!"

There was only the grit of sand and torment as Anakin forced himself to look up, to try to shove the jostling waves of pain aside and focus his rage on the sniper up on the cliff. He saw him, a dark shape rising from the flat cliff edge, black against the porcelain orange sky behind him, but that was as far as his shattered self-control could manage and he spat an incoherent curse at all of them as his strength began to slip away and the Force with it.

"Again! DO IT!" the sergeant snapped, hand tight on his helmet.

* * *

When the other man came charging out of the ship, only one clone named TR-6184 was not so distracted by the shouting of the sergeant and the writhing form of Lord Vader that he even noticed. "Incoming!" he shouted, jerking his blaster up in a wild spray of fire toward the hostile.

The man leapt through the air, impossibly graceful for the human he clearly was, and a line of sizzling blue followed the sweep of his hand, deflecting the bolts to shoot out across the waves. He landed in front of the fallen Vader, dropping to his knees and slamming his lightsaber up just in time: Sniper 6186's shot ricocheted into the sand, kicking up a tiny puff of dust just in front of him.

Before the other men could get their guns halfway up to fire, he'd reached out to 6186 on the cliff, as if accusing him, and the man slid off the side with a horrified scream and plummeted to the rocks below, his blaster stand and weapon following with sickening thuds.

Sergeant was next, a sweep of ozone and lightning sending his head rolling back to the others as his helmet went another direction.

And then, in the still of the first blush of dawn, there was only screaming and firing as 6184 and the other three tried to take him out in a blind panic, forgetting about the need to bring Vader back alive.

They had never seen a Jedi in real life, their generation sent to the field just after the Great Purge to Cleanse the Glorious Empire That Expands to the Edge of the Universe. They had learned as all schoolchildren now did, clone or not, that Jedi were living caricatures of the faults of the old Republic, upper class pretending to be poor, morally and physically weak and better suited to scheming and corruption and sabbac than anything else.

6184 knew better now.

This man was inhuman, wild and growling, spinning to thrust his blade up through 6181's chest and then whirling to avoid desperate shots that only peppered the edge of his saber in sharp, cruel flares of light, drawing closer to them no matter what they did.

He dove and swept across 6185's legs, neatly severing them, and the clone fell back with a strangled curse, weapon firing wildly into the air as the man rose in the same graceful whirl to cut his arms off and then stab him in reverse as he stood. The limbs flew back away from 6185's body to skid across the sand as he dropped to the ground, lifeless.

6184 and 6189 were the only two left standing against him. They turned and ran back toward the dropship, yelling incoherently into their coms so loudly they hissed with static, but they kept screaming anyway.

The man watched them go, and then strode off after them, knuckles white on the hilt of his weapon as it swung in a blue arc at his side.

They were heading toward a plastirope ladder that had been recently staked to the side of the cliff, a long and thin pattern of dull color in the weak pastel glow that surrounded them all as the sun neared the horizon.

Their pursuer stopped at the bottom and watched them climb in blind panic, panting and their feet slipping as they struggled to get to the top.

He let them get a little over halfway before he brought his hand up, the Force slithering past them and up to the stakes. One jerked free, sending them careening against the cliff wall with startled shouts as the ladder swung wildly.

Tilting his head to the other side, he took a few steps back and snapped his hand back the other way. The second stake pulled free, the ladder and two clones crashing to the ground in front of him. There was yelling overhead as the two assigned to the dropship came running to the edge to see what was happening.

He lifted his hand and welcomed them to join him, jerking them cleanly off the edge to join their brothers in a pair of sickening thuds at the bottom.

6184 and 6189 were still moving, limbs at impossible angles and blood gurgling in their throats. He put his saber through them and looked up with wild eyes that glinted strange hues in the first rays of dawn cutting across them. Two men were running at him from the direction of the cave, the last two of ten in a classic clone squad, firing uneven, panicked shots that burned into the cliff above him with acrid pops.

Snarling, Obi-Wan cut them down in a vicious dance of blue light and blaster bolts, deflecting them back into one's helmet and the other's chest. They fell to the beach in a sprawl of hard white plating and soft, boneless bodies.

He whirled, searching for other enemies, others who wanted to hurt him or those that were his.

His soul craved more, but there were none to be found, and the blistering storm of his rage beat vainly against the fragile walls of his skin and his heart, demanding release. There was so much of it, enough to cover a whole continent, enough to veil an entire world. Obi-Wan felt it sweeping him away, and just as he was about to let it, to sink into complete fury and madness, a familiar presence touched his mind.

 _Master… Obi-Wan… don't..._

Anakin.

The gales battering his sanity died away, leaving a clear, unforgiving realization of the bodies lying all around him and the one who had called out to his soul. _Anakin!_

He snapped his lightsaber off and ran back, mind reeling from what he'd done _._ In all of his years on the run, he'd never killed anyone if he could help it. _An entire squad. I just murdered an entire squad._

 _And I did not feel anything as I did it._

 _Force help me._

Anakin was on his hands and knees, gloves half-sunk into the dirt as he tried to push himself to his feet, the scattered strands of the Force knotted around him to instinctively heal him as best it could and the stims carrying away what it couldn't reach. Obi-Wan helped him up and they stumbled back toward the ship together at an awkward, uneven pace. "We need to land again near the dropship," he told Anakin as they climbed the ramp, boots thudding heavily against the metal planks.

"I'll do it," he grunted. "How many are left in the dropship to fight?"

"How many were in your squad that came down?"

"Ten."

"Not anymore," Obi-Wan said, voice cold and flat. "The ship's ours. Let's get this over with."

With well over half an hour to go before the ship in orbit came back around into com range, they proved their theory that lockboxes were not designed to hold up to lightsabers, and neither were ancient Sith talismans. The thing died with Obi-Wan's saber through it, the floor, and the ground beneath it, bubbling like liquid and then solidifying back into black slag. There was a violent, momentary shiver in the Force around them, and then nothing.

The two watched in silence as the remains hardened and cracked, Anakin's saber dangling from his metal hand and the other on Obi-Wan's shoulder as if to staunch the wound in his soul.

When it was clear the talisman was now nothing more than an ugly pile of dirty glass, they turned to go back to the ship and the frightened children that waited there, Obi-Wan wondering what it had really cost to destroy it.


	17. Brothers

Deep in the void of space, random jumps carrying them out away from the horrid shore and beautiful planet that brought only misery, Obi-Wan and Anakin spent the first hour in a quiet, hissed argument about going to look for Ahsoka as the children took turns peering out of their room at them and the stars fell and then streaked out around them once, twice, three times.

Obi-Wan, for the moment haunted by not only the slaughter on the beach but the terrified look Luke had given him when they came back onboard, no longer wanted to search for her. "If I were running a rebellion you are not the person I would want to see. They may shoot you on sight."

"I have information they can use. And I'll tell them everything I know. Vader is dead."

"They have no way of knowing that, and no reason to trust you."

"You're with me."

"I was your Master, Anakin," he said, anger thrumming beneath the sharp, jagged weariness left behind by the fading stim. _I am to be nothing else in my life, am I?_ "They won't trust me, either."

Anakin leaned forward, glaring at the controls as the autopilot dropped them out of hyperspace in front of a pink and green smudge of a nebula. "We can't stay on our own. Luke and Leia need more than us to be safe."

"So put them with a rebellion. Surely that will keep them out of sight of the Emperor," Obi-Wan said in a voice so dry Anakin could hear the edge in every syllable.

Anakin took a deep breath, the seething pain of his own men's stun bolts still ghosting through his own body, and tried not to respond in kind. "We need sleep. Both of us. We'll talk about this later." He punched in the last jump command and the nebula was gone, the blue dawn of hyperspace rising up over the ship once again. "I set this last jump for a day, out to the Kajhkan system. It's busy enough and far enough from the Empire no one should even notice us. And that way we can get some sleep before we arrive there."

Obi-Wan nodded and stood, walking silently to the back and turning into the room opposite the children's. Anakin watched him go over his shoulder and the door close behind him, and sighed out into the blue sliding by in front of him. _He still has his saber on._

 _Hell, I'm still in my cloak._ Forcing himself to double- and then triple-check the jump settings, not fully trusting his own beleaguered mind, Anakin pushed back and rose, making his way back to the children's room.

"Papa? Where are we going?" Leia asked as he shrugged the heavy black cloak off and tossed it over the top bunk. She and Luke were sitting together on the bottom one, shoulders touching as they usually were. Luke's eyes were red and he was sniffling, Leia the same.

Anakin knelt and put his arms around them, drawing them in close for a warm, thankful embrace. It felt strange to touch them with the same heavy gloves he'd worn as Vader, and he decided to get rid of them as soon as he could. He sat back and stripped the left one off, unwilling to remove the right one and expose his metal hand again, tossing it up on the top bed. "We're going to a little system I once visited a long time ago. No one knows us there, and we'll be safe."

"Mama's really gone, isn't she?" Luke asked in a tremulous voice, and Leia melted against him, letting out a stifled cry into his hair.

Anakin heard a thousand answers rise in his mind, some vague and some horribly specific and all of them tinted the drab hues of grief and guilt. "Yes." He sat between them, pulling them both against his chest, and stroked their backs as they cried against him, his own tears joining theirs.

"She's in the Force now. She's not hurting anymore," he said with some effort, considering but ultimately not attempting to smile or pad this truth with flowery visions.

These were his children. They knew about the Force even if their mother had never used that word, knew it for the all-encompassing presence that it was. To be in the Force was to be home. Forever.

"It's our fault," Leia wailed, voice muffled against his tunic. "We hurt her a long time ago. Mama always said it was you but it was us too."

"No," Anakin murmured, heart tearing in two at her words. "I hurt her when I was angry, and you protected her. You helped her."

"Will we be dragons too?" Luke asked, wiping at his eyes but unable to stop his tears as he clutched Anakin's tunic and buried his face in it. "Like you? And Master Kenobi?"

Anakin pressed him close, shaking his head. "He is not a dragon."

"We saw him," Leia whispered, almost too softly for Anakin to hear. "On the beach."

"Does he have eyes like me?" he tried, wanting this conversation to wait, suddenly desperate for sleep and distance from this awful day.

"Not yet," Luke mumbled, drawing his knees up to huddle against Anakin and pulling on Anakin's tunic with a small, curled fist. "I'm tired. Can we go back to sleep?"

 _Is he tired or did he read that from me?_ Anakin wondered, too grateful for the change of topic to care about the fact his boots were still on or that he was leaning against the wall behind them rather than lying down. "Yes. For as long as you want." Running his hand through Leia's hair and his thumb over her tears, he patted her back. "Come on, you too. Let's get some sleep."

She snuggled up against him, sneaking a hand out to take Luke's, and the two of them were asleep minutes later, their small forms pale against the dark colors of their father's clothing.

 _Obi-Wan?_ Anakin asked through the tenuous lines of their renewed bond. _Do you want to come in here with us? The top bed's open._

 _No,_ came the short, weary reply. _Almost asleep._ This was a lie, and Anakin would have argued with Obi-Wan but his body had gone through the very last of his reserves, and at the warm weight of his children against him and the knowledge they were beyond all doubt safe for the moment, he slipped away into sleep with a vague sense of concern his only reply.

* * *

As the days stretched into weeks, lies became part of the daily routine for Obi-Wan.

Anakin counted them much in the same way he counted the times they argued about looking for Ahsoka and all the different reasons Obi-Wan had for not doing so.

"I'm fine." This was the most common lie.

"I'm not tired. You three go ahead to bed and I'll come in later." These were the second and third. He slept little and only in the opposite room, Anakin never waking to find him in the bed above them where he'd promised to be.

"I am only being logical," the fourth, when they talked about Ahsoka. Yes, Anakin knew there was a chance the rebels would throw him in jail or worse if he and Obi-Wan showed up, but he had fought against the chance of capture and execution for years in the Clone Wars long before the Empire had risen. This was a danger he was used to, and the coldest part of his heart said that it might be better for his children if he were killed because then there was no chance he could pollute them, as Luke had wondered. But Obi-Wan's fears were different. _You're afraid to go to her. You're afraid of what she'll think of you._

As time passed, Obi-Wan became the first to talk of the daily needs of the ship as they touched down in yet another backwater port somewhere that would be along the edge of a printed starmap. Supply lists, fuel needs, assessing any threat posed by the locals before touching down: these routines were simple and mindless and kept him busy while Anakin handled the repair and maintenance of the ship. The two would meditate together, working on their mental bridge, but Obi-Wan continued to struggle and refused any help Anakin offered.

Obi-Wan had lost the ability to meditate on his own.

But Anakin was stubborn and the bridge began to rebuild itself slowly, one tiny piece at a time, as he strained to reach out to the man he'd once thought of as his brother and now also saw as yet another victim in the long line he'd left sprawled behind him.

Unaware of the tension between the two, Luke and Leia ran back and forth through the ship constantly, playing, asking questions about whatever Anakin or Obi-Wan was doing, asking for hugs and learning new things and occasionally making trouble as young children were wont to do, especially children who had never known more than a single stretch of beach and grass for their entire lives.

Their curiosity soothed the worst of the strange mismatch between the two men, their father and their father's former master, and the atmosphere in the ship remained balanced enough the children began to work through the worst of their own emotions and out into something approaching wonder as they landed in random port after port and weeks became a month, and then two.

Obi-Wan encouraged their curiosity as he had for young Anakin, and whenever they were bored he quickly put them to work on old Initiate Force drills Anakin had forgotten about until he saw them again. The smiles Obi-Wan gave the twins as they put balled-up flimsiplasts into buckets and balanced the long edges of ration packs on a single finger were the most genuine ones he had left, it seemed.

Anakin watched as he used all of his strength to give this happy praise, fading back into dull silence when the children had moved on to loudly inspect their father's work on some circuit board or duct line. There were no more jokes or even cutting remarks when Anakin knew the chance was there, when he could hear Obi-Wan's remembered voice in his own mind caustically pointing out something that was just not going to work.

Obi-Wan had lost his sense of humor.

There was talk of Ahsoka occasionally, and of some kind of attempt at formal schooling for the twins beyond Force practice, but it never seemed to lead anywhere. Obi-Wan and Anakin both showered love and kindness on the children, but when it came to the two of them alone there was a rough edge to the air all of the meditation they were doing had no apparent effect on.

Three months after their escape, in a swamp city that smelled of fish and shifted on the rafts it had been built on, Anakin was almost recognized despite the hoods and cloaks he and Obi-Wan wore whenever they left the ship. It had taken mind-tricking two Imperials and six passers-by to escape without notice.

Back in the ship, his blood cold in his veins, Anakin listened with deep, unrelenting guilt as Obi-Wan laid out what they hadn't wanted to admit. Anakin needed a mask, and General Kenobi did too, on the off-hand chance someone somewhere remembered that wherever Kenobi was, Skywalker was never far behind.

Lord Vader's exploits were still credited in the holo news, but systems were falling at a slower pace, and no new footage of him ever accompanied the stories. Rumors were already beginning to spring up, though, even here in the outreaches of known space, saying among other wild speculation that maybe Vader had died on some mission, that possibly the Emperor had had him killed, or even that Vader had fled the Empire to start his own army somewhere out in Wild Space.

The last thing the four of them needed was a chance sighting of Anakin to slither its way back to Coruscant.

And so Obi-Wan and Anakin bought field-grade masks at their next stop, lightweight ones inspired by Mandalorian helmets that slid down to cover their entire faces with plenty of room in the black glass of the visor to see. The vendor, an ancient Iptaki woman, promised they were not only subtle enough for daily wear in less-than-savory places but would keep any kind of snow, rain, or sand out for at least ten years.

Later that week, back on the ship, Obi-Wan held the cool metal and tempra-glass in his hands, tracing the lines of it, hating its sleek shape and the way it fit him perfectly as he put it on, pulled his hood up over it, and followed Anakin outside into yet another city.

He had lost the freedom to show his own face.

But the final straw, the thing that snapped that last, thin rope tying him to the ideals he'd once cherished so dearly, was what he saw after their daily attempt at a meditation session six months into their never-ending journey.

It was a chilly, overcast morning in the hills of a forest city, their ship resting on a wide launch pad along with a line of others above the main skyline that sprawled out and away from them. Anakin and Obi-Wan were seated inside on the floor of the main cabin, the landing ramp down and clouds of cool mist drifting up like smoke to them as Luke and Leia ran around with other travelers' children in the woods below. The children's laughs and excited chatter floated up as well, muted and sounding as if they were in some other place entirely as it echoed through the fog.

In the empty blackness of meditation fading into consciousness, Obi-Wan felt the warmth of Anakin's palm against his, the only point of heat on his skin as the mist brushed his cheek and the back of his hand. He felt that brief calm of their link slipping away, and resigned himself to coming back to the real world and all that crouched there, waiting to pounce on his soul and continue tearing pieces away, gnawing him down to bones and regret.

Opening his eyes, he watched as Anakin did the same. And saw something that would have filled him with pure joy years or even months ago but now left a horrible weight in his gut alongside his relief.

 _His eyes are blue again._

 _Of course._

 _Of course they are._

Obi-Wan opened his mouth and closed it again, struggling as ambivalent emotions warred inside his heart, and Anakin tilted his head, that long-missed hue filled with worry and concern. "Obi-Wan?" he asked in a cautious whisper.

"They're blue, Anakin. You've come back enough your eyes are blue again."

And instead of hugging him, instead of sharing the stunned, dazed smile Anakin gave him, Obi-Wan abruptly stood and stalked back into his room with fists clenched so hard his nails bit into his palms.

* * *

"Obi-Wan, wait!" Anakin called, startled, as the door to Obi-Wan's room shut. Standing, touching his cheek, he wondered if he'd heard him wrong, and leaned over toward one of the bare metal plates that covered a series of emergency switches in the wall. The reflection was warped and odd, but the colors were true.

And his eyes were blue. He had heard Obi-Wan right.

It was not a repair, something as simple as flipping a switch on a droid after rewiring it. The return of the bright color Padme had once called summer-sky did not erase the atrocities he had committed. It did not immediately change how he felt, the slow, fragile swell of calm in his heart fighting his base, selfish urges on an almost daily basis.

The blue was not the end of his struggle, not the oasis awaiting a traveler who has nearly died crossing the desert.

But the color gave him hope that there was some good left in him after all. Maybe enough to stay by his children's side, where he so achingly wanted to be. And Obi-Wan's.

 _Obi-Wan._ "What's wrong?" Anakin said, moving to the door and knocking on it.

"Go away," came the muffled reply.

"No. Open the door."

It sprang open, Obi-Wan standing there with eyes narrowed and jaw clenched. He looked furious and broken and it terrified Anakin to see the hopelessly lost look on his face. "Why, Anakin? What do you want? Congratulations? Well, congratulations. Leave me alone. Please."

Anakin stepped in, and Obi-Wan stepped back, the door closing behind them and the distant echoes of the children cut off with the sigh of it settling into its frame.

In the middle of his confusion, Anakin realized this was the first time he'd been inside Obi-Wan's room in a month, possibly longer, and frowned at the thought even as he reached out to him. _I haven't been paying enough attention to him. The children just take up so much time…_

"Don't touch me." Obi-Wan brushed his hand aside with a quick swat.

"What's wrong?"

"What is wrong?" Obi-Wan repeated, drawing himself up to his full height. His Coruscanti accent always got stronger the angrier he was, and as he spoke it slid out in absolute, icy perfection. "Nothing is wrong for you. You have _something_ , Anakin. Do you understand? After all that you have done, all of the evil you have committed, what has happened to you? You are free! You have your children! You have a future!"

Anakin stared, frozen and wordless, unable to put his thoughts into speech before Obi-Wan's bitter snarl ripped them apart again. "You have them! You have something. After all of this, you of all people have something. I have nothing! Nothing, Anakin!"

"That… that's not true," he stuttered, overwhelmed by the rage rolling in violent sweeps from Obi-Wan's mind. "You have me."

"You." The word came out like a curse. "Yes, I have you. I am the master of Anakin Skywalker, the master that failed you. And so as my punishment that is all I will ever be. The master of Anakin Skywalker. Everywhere I go, I am linked to you. I will have no life, no name, nothing that is not connected to you somehow. And because Anakin Skywalker is dead, so must I be." He pointed at the mask lying atop his cloak on his bed. "I am not even allowed my own face anymore."

Anakin's gaze dropped to the floor. "Obi-Wan…"

"No, wait, Anakin. Do you know what the worst part is when you have nothing? Other things start creeping in. Darker things. Oh, I felt them all when I was a Jedi. They've always circled around me, Anakin, but I always kept them out because I was a Jedi. I was a Master. I was a General. I had a purpose. And then Mustafar happened. You happened." He paused, remembering. "And then Padme. The beach."

"The children!" Anakin said, glaring up at him. "What about them? You think they don't love you? That you don't have them? Are they nothing?"

"They're yours! Yours and Padme's! They're not mine! They will never love me like they love you!"

"Obi-Wan…"

"Luke watches me sometimes, carefully. And he should. He knows what's inside me, Anakin." Obi-Wan ran his hands through his hair, squeezing them into fists as he did, and then jabbed a finger toward Anakin. "Yours have gone blue. Mine have gone yellow. Twice now. Just for a moment, just in the darkest hours of the night when you all are asleep and I am awake and staring into the mirror, waiting for it to happen because I can feel it boiling inside me, I can feel so much anger and hatred-"

Anakin shook his head, holding up his hand. "Dreams. You have to be dreaming, Obi-Wan. You would never-"

"I would never what?" Obi-Wan was in his face, shoving him back. "Hate you? Loathe you? Want to kill you for ruining my life? For everything you've done?" Every question brought another rough push until Anakin fell back against the cold plane of the back wall. "I thought about it, you know, a few months ago. How much easier life would be for the children and I if you were dead. That's horrible. It shouldn't exist alongside what I feel for you, what I have always felt for you. It's a paradox. And yet there that thought was."

"It's true they'd be safer," Anakin muttered, and was stunned when Obi-Wan wrapped his fingers around his throat.

"Shut up."

"Let me in, please, Obi-Wan. Like in our meditation. I can help you with your anger. I lived with mine for so long..."

Obi-Wan squeezed, the grip a warning. "No. You will leave me that much dignity. You don't get to see what you made me."

"You have seen me, the monster I am. Please, just let me in, I-"

"You don't understand my anger! NO."

Anakin's chest constricted, a star caving in on itself in a flash of heat and blackness. Obi-Wan's eyes had flushed yellow for just a moment as he hissed the last word, a sickly gold wavering across the gray-blue and then gone again.

Anakin moved before he fully understood what he was doing, hand snapping up to catch Obi-Wan by the neck and throw him down to the floor, Obi-Wan too surprised to keep ahold of Anakin's throat. Obi-Wan landed on his side with a thud, scrambling over onto his hands and knees as quickly as he could and trying to stand.

Snarling, Anakin flipped him over onto his back and pinned him with his hands around his neck, an easy feat given his height and how thin he realized Obi-Wan had become. "You want to talk about anger? I burned the galaxy in my anger! I hunted you for years because I was angry! I am still angry about what I've done, about Padme, about you! About everything! And I will not lose you to what took me! Let me IN," he commanded, the Force an endless, merciless wind buffeting Obi-Wan's mind.

Obi-Wan clawed at Anakin's hands around his throat even as he gave out a tortured sob, and Anakin felt the bond between them open. It was not the same as the countless bridges they'd built during meditation: it was the raw, unfiltered light of Obi-Wan's soul, suddenly there in Anakin's mind just as Anakin's shone in his.

Anakin gave a strangled cry as well at all of the anger that flooded to him from Obi-Wan, an avalanche of wounds new and old, some so dim and vast he could barely recognize their shapes. They rolled along into him, past him, out of order and searing in their pain.

 _Never being chosen. Ahsoka's trial. Ahsoka leaving. Qui-Gon took you over me. The Jedi Purge. Satine. I failed my trials. Umbara. All those years running from the Empire. The Code. Luke afraid of me. Kadavo. Qui-Gon's death. You chose Sidious over me. I love you and you chose him over me._

 _No one ever chooses me._

Breathless, hands slipping down from Obi-Wan's throat to his shoulders, Anakin stared down into Obi-Wan's eyes as he let the rage wash over him, drawing as much of it as he could into himself. _I love you! Don't you know that?_ his spirit whispered to Obi-Wan's through the pained roar of the Force around them. _You are my brother! You always have been!_

Unable to take any more, his vision going black around the edges, Anakin sat back, sliding off of Obi-Wan to the side and leaning against the edge of the bed that jutted out there.

"You… do?" came the weak question, directed up at the ceiling.

"Yes."

Obi-Wan rolled over and sat up, dazed and reaching out to Anakin.

Anakin pulled him into a hug so tight it almost hurt both of them, and they sat like that in soothing, healing silence for so long only the sound of Luke and Leia happily stomping up the landing ramp for lunch brought them out of it.


	18. Together

_Hello, readers! I just figured out I can add in author's notes within the document itself at this point... So, all of these chapters later I wanted to say three things: THANK YOU SO MUCH 3 for all of your reviews and support! This story has been tough to write at times and I appreciate every one of you that have read it!_

 _As far as wrapping it up, this story is going to go a chapter or two over the original 20 chapters I planned. The pacing feels off if I cram it all into 20 at this point._

 _And if you are over on Tumblr, I'm writegowrite if you'd like to stop in and say hi. :) Thanks again for reading and have a great day!_

* * *

Over the next week the twins were happier than they'd been, even their young minds picking up on the release of the tension between Anakin and Obi-Wan and the slow and steady rebuilding of their link.

Anakin's blue eyes were a source of puzzlement for only a few minutes when the children returned that eventful day, as Leia peered deep into them and Luke declared them the eyes of a "good dragon". With that proclamation made they moved on to telling him and Obi-Wan in excited arm-waving about all of the strange little animals they and the other children had found in the woods below, climbing up into both of their laps as they talked.

It was clear their father's return from the worst horizons he'd fallen behind was a given for them, even if they hadn't known exactly when it would happen.

Obi-Wan loved them all the more for it. There were no complicated questions of guilt and atonement, the same ones that would haunt Anakin and him for the rest of their lives. Just the unshakable faith that no one was lost forever if they didn't want to be.

A cloud lifted from the ship and life moved on in much gentler rhythms than before. For his part, Obi-Wan began hunting for datapads and books in the cities they touched down in and spent their time wandering through. General topics were easy enough to find, and soon the children began to sound out written letters in Basic and calculate prices and distances, their formal learning lessons always complemented by the endless tasks of maintaining the ship and shopping in ports.

Obi-Wan would sit and record himself into holos and type away into the blank datapads they bought during their longer hyperspace jumps, recalling all he could of the structure and history and purpose of the Order, sometimes long into the night until Anakin came and firmly took the offending piece of tech out of his hands and steered him to his bed.

Jedi material was nowhere to be found, of course, though to Obi-Wan and Anakin's relief neither were the propaganda posters of Vader that had haunted them for so long in their lives apart. At some point they'd been destroyed by the elements, torn down by dissenters, or taken down by the Empire as the official narrative of Vader shifted to that of a hero lost in the recent, bloody battle of Lotaran VIII. Victory for the Empire, it was said, but at a huge cost due to a last-minute strike of a loose, disorganized group of rebels coming to the aid of the locals.

"Sent me out heroically, didn't they?" Anakin muttered as they watched the story on their ship's tiny holo display, feet propped up on the control board as he carved off pieces from a small citrus fruit and popped them into his mouth.

Obi-Wan folded his arms, considering the matter and accepting a slice from Anakin as he spoke. "Even Palpatine knew he couldn't keep feeding people the lie you were alive and with him. This glorious death makes you a martyr for the Empire and justifies the huge loss of life on the Empire's side as a vicious strike by the soulless Separatists, or rebels, or whatever they are now."

The question floated between them again, the one Anakin had given up asking long ago- _Could we join them?-_ and this time Obi-Wan nodded. Reluctantly, but he needed. "Perhaps. We can at least keep an ear out for word of where they might be."

The quick flare of Anakin's relief was palpable through the Force, something to do to work toward the debt he knew he could never pay off but had to try to anyway. "I'll need a new saber."

The red one, the Imperial one, still sat on his hip when they went out but always remained hidden under his cloak and the layers of his clothes. The rule he and Obi-Wan had decided on was ironclad: he could only use it where there could be no witnesses, no one to start a fine line of rumor that could worm its way back to Coruscant and the Emperor. So far that had been only once, in a dark alley of a rain-streaked world, against two gentlemen who had been far too insistent on relieving Anakin of his credits.

"Agreed. The hilt we can assemble from parts we have here or that I can find. The crystal, though, will be tougher to come by," Obi-Wan leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. "I have seen a few on the market here and there, though for nothing we can remotely afford."

"Could we sell the one I have?" Obi-Wan felt Anakin's Force presence waver in guilt as he avoided describing the blade any further than he had to. He examined the remaining wedge of the fruit in his hand, slicing off another piece and releasing more of its crisp scent into the cabin.

"No. Too distinctive. When you make your new one we can destroy it."

And so a small quest began, unimportant in the grand sweep of the cosmos but something for the four of them to focus on during their drifting about the stars. It was not an impossible task at all compared to some of the missions Generals Skywalker and Kenobi had tackled together during the Clone Wars. Lightsaber hilts were often cobbled together by what was at hand, every Jedi's saber different and made from what were mostly generic parts.

The children were thrilled when told they would be included in the search, and sure enough, some weeks later, Luke found the first piece they needed, a power cell and insulator. Leia, not wanting to be left behind, somehow managed to dig a focusing lens out of an intimidating pile of used parts sold by a testy droid on the edge of an island city just a few days after that.

As time passed, no discernible seasons on the ship beyond the time between Luke and Obi-Wan's haircuts, they found more here and there, scattered across the edges of the galaxy.

Anakin would sit at their small work table with the children in his lap, their faces alight with awe as he waved his hand slowly to lift all of the pieces they had assembled so far into the air like a strange sort of dragonfly floating on an unseen wind. "And there's Luke's pieces, and there's Leia's… Now, we still need…" And images would float into their minds, tinged with the intensity that was their father when he was lost in thought and forgot to hold back. They didn't mind. They never did.

"When do we get our own sabers?" Luke asked when they had three parts left to go, hugging Anakin and smiling in the same charming way Anakin sometimes did at Obi-Wan. It was odd seeing his own trick used against him, and Anakin had to chuckle at how nearly successful it was.

"When you're older," Anakin said to groans from both of them, leaning in to point at the empty space floating inside the line of parts above the work table. "And we'll have to find both of you your own crystals. Those aren't easy to come by now that Ilum's off-limits, let alone two of them."

Obi-Wan nodded from his seat across from them, in full agreement with Anakin on both counts as he typed something into a datapad, fingers continuing to fly over the keys as his blue-grey eyes lifted to them. "Initiates your age would not have their own sabers yet."

"But I'm six! Almost seven!" Leia declared, nodding her head for emphasis and folding her arms on the table to lean forward. "And I can bargain!"

Anakin laughed and shrugged his shoulders, letting the parts float back down to the box they stayed in for now and the ripple of the Force that had held them aloft fading away to stillness. "She is learning, Obi-Wan. I watched her talk a shop-owner into two sweets for the price of one just yesterday."

"Well, bargaining is definitely part of being a Jedi, but you cannot bargain your way into a saber at the age of seven, my dear."

"How about eight?" Luke said, carefully closing the box and taking it over to the magnet-shelf it sat in most of the time before returning to crawl up into Anakin's lap.

"I will answer you when you are eight, youngling," Obi-Wan said in a serene, perfect imitation of himself.

"We're gonna be a million before we get one," Leia sighed with an exaggerated flop of her head into her arms crossed on the table.

"No, just half a million," Anakin grinned, hugging Luke and setting him down again. "Off, you two. Study time."

The chance at the last piece, the one that evaded them for so long, appeared unexpectedly to Obi-Wan in a chance game of sabbac deep in the back of a bar Anakin sat across the street from with the children on a world permanently wreathed in rivers of clouds.

Under the heavy awnings of an inn's porch, he drank cheap caf and people-watched with Luke and Leia, the two making up back stories about the sentients that passed them by. This was a typical run for small change, pocket money to buy food and essentials, and the drill was long established: Obi-Wan did the dirty work while Anakin kept the children within sight of wherever he was in case the situation took a turn for the worse. The twins were always made to memorize the way back to the ship from where they sat in case the situation couldn't get any worse and they had to run there themselves.

On this dreary day, the grey and black skies making noon seem like twilight, Luke and Leia were adding on to each other's tales, this one about how the harmless-looking Iktotchi hurrying by was really a secret spy for the rebels and had a ship that was bigger than a mountain and ten children that were all spies too and several other things Anakin couldn't quite follow when a sharp twinge of surprise cut across his bond with Obi-Wan.

 _You all right in there, Master?_ The last word wasn't consciously said, but the bond between them had strengthened to the same near-perfect sharing of souls it had been during their glory days of the early Clone Wars and it was an unavoidable echo. Obi-Wan didn't mind it anymore: it felt like home in more ways than one, and he was happy for the touch of Anakin's mind on his.

 _The Rodian across from me just put an Ilum crystal on the table as his wager._

 _He did?_ Anakin's excitement sparked and faded in the same instant. _We don't have enough to bet against that._

Obi-Wan's answer was short, a bare statement of fact. _Yes, we do. I just put my saber in._

 _What?!_

 _Leave me be, Anakin. I need to concentrate._ There was no anger there, just a firmness Anakin dared not argue any further.

Five minutes passed and Anakin felt fear begin to wrap around him, tightening with every minute that passed. Luke and Leia were too involved in their next story to notice, something about a human man walking by that was really a wolf when the sun went down. Unmoving, his caf forgotten in front of him, Anakin stared hard at the bar as if he could see through the walls, not daring to reach out to Obi-Wan again but horrified at the thought of Obi-Wan losing his saber.

 _He bet it for me. If he loses it for me I will never forgive myself._

Almost fifteen more minutes crawled by with the urgency of a mountain shifting, slower than Anakin could ever remember time passing and heavy with worry. He almost jumped out of his seat every time the doors swung open, but each time it wasn't Obi-Wan and he glared at the innocents that didn't notice him, coming and going about their business. The clouds skidded by high in the grey of other lines of future storms and the children talked and nothing happened across the way that he could feel at all.

And then the doors were opening and there was the grey, masked ghost he knew as well as himself.

The mask hid all expression on Obi-Wan's face, but he lifted his hand across his chest in an old combat signal for "all clear" as he stepped back out on to the street.

 _You did it?!_

 _I did._ The happiness radiating from Obi-Wan crossed the street and washed over Anakin in a bright wave of light. The twins stopped their story mid-sentence, and Luke canted his head to the side. "Did he do good?"

"Yes. Yes, he did. Come on, kids. We have something to build."

* * *

Anakin walked through the bustling market of their thirty-second port, the bright, gaudy colors of its tents and flags and stalls dulled to ghosts of their original hues by the tinted glass of his mask. Luke hurried ahead of him, taller than he had been when Anakin had first seen him and over a year between them and the horror of their first meeting.

"Over here!" Luke called, pointing with childish excitement down one of the side lanes that seemed indistinguishable from all of the others, lined with piles of lush, dark fruit, baskets of spices, and vendors shouting deals to any sentient within half a klick.

Anakin smiled behind his mask, nodding, not hurrying along. It was a beautiful and cool autumn day in this part of this world and he was enjoying the tug of chilly air on his cloak, the way the cold tried to seep in through his collars. He wore layers of deep brown and black now, much as he had at the Temple if in a very different civilian cut, and he had come to love the fact no one paid him any mind beyond his height in some places.

"What is he after?" Obi-Wan asked him, his own mask and clothing clouds of varied grey and beige swirling around him as they walked. There was a faint amusement in his voice: Luke and Leia could, within an hour of touching down in a city, find something interesting without even trying. Whether it was the Force or just their innate curiosity, neither of the men knew. But the twins' love of discovery kept away the darker aspects of their constant running: the handful of credits picked up here and there at corner street games and, when fuel was low, the visits to casinos too small to have a Force-sensitive employed to prevent exactly what Anakin and Obi-Wan had done when they acquired the crystal for the saber that now hung at Anakin's side.

So Luke and Leia's curiosity was always indulged, sometimes even before landing: recently Obi-Wan would let them take turns closing their eyes and pointing to which system they would visit next. Leia had chosen this one, the Oaub system, and from the moment they'd come down out of the ship the twins were already in love with the suns that shone double like them and the giant market that spread out in all directions around the spaceport.

"I bet he found food," Leia smiled, her hand in Obi-Wan's gloved one, a happy touch of heat through the leather. "He's always hungry!" She was taller too, her hair in braids Anakin had put in that morning, as he had once done for her mother, and almost lost in her own new cloak that was really a size too big for her. "Are you hungry?"

"I might be a little. It's almost lunch time, isn't it?"

Luke was waiting down the crowded and noisy aisle, shifting from foot to foot in his eagerness to show them, and as they got closer, a wonderful smell drifted in through the vents in Anakin's mask. It was spicy, with a faint hollow sweetness to it.

 _Sand-tears spice._ "Tatooine food?" He slowed and came to stand with Luke in happy surprise before the cramped, crowded food stall situated between two spice dealers. For all that had happened to him on Tatooine, that distant desert world would always be home to the small boy that had looked much like Luke. Anakin clapped him on the shoulder with a note of admiration in his muffled voice at the fact Luke had remembered the few times he'd mentioned it. "Nice work, kid."

They were never family outside of the ship, even in their happy moments, but the sadness at telling those lies had passed some time ago, replaced by the simple acceptance some truths are unavoidable. "Thank you, sir," Luke beamed as the young Twi'lek running the stall opened his arms wide at the approach of new customers.

"Welcome! What'll you have? We have the best dried kawn-meat in this market, and just made a batch of the most delicious sand-tears stew this morning."

"The best? Is there more than one Tatooine food stall here?" Anakin inquired in fluent Huttese and with a grin, the language flowing back into his mind along with the scent of the food. Luke and Leia gaped at him, having only heard bits and pieces of the language when something went wrong on the ship: Obi-Wan was fairly certain both of them could now swear perfectly in it if nothing else. He didn't care for Huttese himself, but he liked the gentle, pleased glow that suffused Anakin's Force presence as Anakin tilted his head at the owner. "I'd be surprised if there were."

"Ah, a native son!" the Twi'lek answered with a laugh in the same guttural cadences. "No, just me."

"So what were you going to charge me for the best and the most delicious?" Anakin chuckled, reaching over the narrow counter to grab the Twi'lek's shoulder as he did the same to Anakin in an old way of greeting Luke and Leia both silently agreed they would have to practice later.

"More than I am now. We're a long way from home, aren't we?" The stall owner motioned around to the market and the lanky, pale native inhabitants mixed in with a dozen different type of travelers, to the tall silhouettes of plants and trees off in the distance. "But the suns are the same."

"True," Anakin nodded, reaching inside his shirt for the credits there. "Thank you for your kindness to a fellow dune-brother, sir. Two pods of the stew and two of the kawn, please."

Once they'd gotten their food, the four wandered further into the market to find a place to sit, past odd sights and mundane, beneath long rolls of cloth glimmering with embroidery and bushels of dried black herbs hanging like chimes, under tall arches of fruit speared and set out to dry, and finally came out into a large courtyard in the middle. It was paved in flat stones with rough wooden benches laid out, and the four found a table for themselves there, the breeze blowing the steam away in white wisps as the twins pried the lids off of everything and the pungent smell of the spice swirled around them.

"Eat everything you want and we'll buy more from him on the way back to the ship for us," Anakin offered as Obi-Wan nodded, their cloaks settling as they sat down across from the twins. "You eat them together," he explained. "You take the meat with your fingers and dip it in the stew."

 _I've never had this. It smells incredible._ Obi-Wan thought to Anakin, the message slipping with ease through the bond long repaired, their hearts and minds comfortable and at ease with each other once again. A gust of wind came and went, rustling their hoods and slapping against their masks and tugging at the children's hair as well, the fall breeze playful today.

 _It's pretty good. Mother used to make it for me when she could barter for the kawn meat._

 _Can we talk this way too?_ Leia wondered, a huge smile on her face and a spot of stew already in the corner of her mouth.

Obi-Wan smiled and reached across to her, careful not to drag his sleeve in the open bowls and brushing the streak away. _I thought it gave you a headache, my dear, to talk to anyone but Luke._

 _It's getting better_ , she answered with only a slight furrowing of her eyebrows.

Luke nodded, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of meat. _She is getting better._

 _Are you teaching her?_ Anakin asked, careful to hold most of his true voice back. He was afraid of hurting the children no matter how tough and resilient they showed themselves to be and no matter how many times they chided him to "stop whispering".

 _I'm trying, but she doesn't listen too much!_ Luke teased, grinning at Leia and getting an elbow in the ribs for it. The din of the market continued all around them, unnoticed in this quiet bubble of peace and family that had taken so long to build but now was stronger than any armor Anakin or Obi-Wan had ever worn.

 _Hmm, who does that remind me of?_ Obi-Wan mused with a pointed turn of his head toward Anakin. _Stubborn? Doesn't listen?_

 _I hear you just fine. Listening depends,_ Anakin smiled back through the Force at all of them.

The suns shone overhead, their warmth too weak to beat the chill of the autumn air, and the children ate as the four silently and happily talked of small things: what the children had seen, what Anakin would upgrade next on the ship, what Obi-Wan was writing about this month. As the last of the stew disappeared from Leia's bowl, though, a flicker of uncertainty passed through her mind into theirs, and she put it down to peer around Anakin's shoulder. _Papa/Obi-Obi,_ she said, both of them a single entity to her young mind, _I think something bad is happening over there._

The twins' intuition was flawless, their guardians had learned early on, and Anakin stood before he even looked, throwing a leg over the bench and going around to the side the children sat on as Obi-Wan twisted around in his seat.

Something was indeed happening at the entrance to the courtyard: there was some shouting, some kind of angry disagreement. And then the horrid shriek of a blaster bolt being fired into the air as a row of soldiers in black-lined white, gleaming against the grey skies behind them, jogged into the courtyard, their boots pounding across the worn stone. A magnified voice rang out ahead of them, jagged with static, telling people to move back.

 _Imperial troops_ , Anakin and Obi-Wan thought to each other in a moment of pure fear. They weren't supposed to be this far out. There wasn't an Imperial base around for at least two systems!

"Kriff me," Anakin hissed to himself as Obi-Wan whipped around in his seat to check the other exits loosely ringed around them. Walls of soldiers were forming at each of them, blasters ready and shoving market-goers back into the courtyard. Short of crashing through brick walls or stacks of goods, there was no way out save past the soldiers now standing two deep and pointing their blasters at heads when the pushing failed to work.

Their leader spoke again through a microcom, echoing easily over the beginnings of panic among the sentients now trapped in the large circle of cobblestone and benches, their cries of fear and anger not unlike animals recognizing the scent of a slaughterhouse. "Attention, citizens. This is a random persons check, authorized by Containment Code one-point-three-two. Remain where you are until a soldier has cleared you to leave."


	19. Trapped

"Pa- sir?" Luke asked, too frightened by the lines of soldiers now hemming everyone into the courtyard to speak through the Force, and Anakin reached down to take his and Leia's hand and press them against him. They had been lucky enough so far they had yet to use the forged documents they'd purchased at a dear price several months ago, and Anakin's heart began to thud at the thought of having to present them.

 _Will the papers work?_ he asked Obi-Wan, fear staining the thought dark and mottled. _Can we mind trick them if we don't?_

Obi-Wan watched with narrowed eyes, head canted, as a pair of soldiers began working through people on the far side of the courtyard, inspecting the forms presented with sometimes trembling hands from the sentients roughly lined up there. _I think… no… wait…_

All four felt it at the same time, an icy wave that had nothing to do with the clear, crisp breeze swirling around them. It froze the children in place and Anakin's horror bled easily into Obi-Wan's mind as he turned slowly to confirm the awful truth Obi-Wan had seen over his shoulder.

A third figure was striding up to the soldiers, cloaked in sharp-edged layers of black, yellow eyes glowing like balefire in her hood as they scanned the crowd before she turned to the first line of people. She was like a hole in the world, in the Force, in everything, a moving rip in the fabric of all that was right and good. Too close and you would fall in, swallowed up by the black that waited on the other side.

"An Inquisitor," Anakin muttered in awe and disbelief as Obi-Wan leaned across the table, grabbing Luke and Leia's hands. They were small and delicate in his own, and he pressed them hard as he spoke, underscoring the urgency of what he said.

"Children, I need you to do what we practiced when you pretended to be mice. Right now. Do you remember that?"

"Small and silent," the twins repeated, and both men were relieved to feel their Force presence begin to fade as the children withdrew into themselves. It wasn't perfect, but it would keep them hidden for now, and the men were always shielded when they went out anymore. _We're safe for now_ , Anakin thought at Obi-Wan, unable to look away from the dark silhouette considering people one at a time on the far side of the courtyard.

 _Until it's our turn in that line_ , Obi-Wan thought, rubbing his thumb over the back of the children's hands to keep them calm. Others in the large group all around them were doing similar things, soothing their children or old ones, and Obi-Wan thanked all of the stars that the place had been so crowded. _Anakin, we have a few minutes before they get to us._ Without turning, so as not to draw attention to himself, Obi-Wan slid his gaze over the side of the courtyard he faced. _Two exits, both blocked by at least 10 men each._

 _Same on my side_ , Anakin noted grimly, sliding his hand along Luke's back and squeezing Leia's shoulder. _Fight our way through the east one, get back to the ship and go?_

Obi-Wan shook his head, trying to stay calm and think of a way out of this that would not bring them more evil later. _We have to try to avoid using our sabers if we can. This sector will be crawling with troops within a week if we do._

 _I can create a distraction somehow and you get them back to the ship. I'll meet you there._

 _Anakin-_ Obi-Wan began to argue, and then a sound cut through the cool air and his thoughts entirely.

The dry crackle of a saber powering up.

And then another.

He turned, the world in slow motion, as Luke pointed past him, wide-eyed.

A tall, cloaked figure jumped atop of one of the benches off to their left, two white sabers lit brighter than the suns floating in the blue sky overhead. "Now!" she called, and suddenly men were throwing grenades into the line of soldiers and people were screaming and Anakin was shouting curses as the whole world spun into confused, deafening chaos.

The crowd to their left began to fall to the dull thud of blaster bolts meeting flesh, and Obi-Wan drew his saber on instinct and just in time, feet sliding out against the cobblestones as he caught a bolt just before it hit Anakin and then another before it hit Leia.

"Hurry!" he shouted, dancing backward with them, his blade spinning and whirling, plucking shots out of the air in puffs of ozone and smoke as the crowd scattered in blind panic. "To the ship!"

 _Not without you!_ Anakin's panicked voice rang in his mind as he scooped up the two children into his arms, and Obi-Wan swore he would be right behind them, the promise bright and loud and reassuring Anakin that it was safe to run.

The cloaked woman that had started this desperate attempt at an escape through the troops, her achingly familiar voice one Obi-Wan had no time to dwell on, was fighting on his right as the Imperial troops shoved forward and pushed the crowd back and out of the exit in a barrage of fire. Her sabers flashed, creating her own shield for the innocents and the men fleeing behind her.

"Jedi!" she shouted at him without looking, weaving bolts into nothing with vicious sweeps of her blade through the air. "I'll distract the Inquisitor! Go with my people! They'll get you out of here!" The black taint of the Force was rushing toward them like a summer storm that had waited into fall to build before tumbling down on this unfortunate town, heralding the arrival of the Inquisitor more than the crimson streak of her blade cutting down the fleeing to make a path toward them.

Deflecting bolts as fast as he could, releasing all of his fear into the emptiness of battle, Obi-Wan noticed distantly that Anakin's presence rolled past him to fling the troops firing at them off their feet. It was a momentary distraction, and stopped them long enough Obi-Wan and Anakin dove off into a side aisle with the children, caught up in one of the groups mindlessly fleeing the battle.

"To the ship!" Obi-Wan shouted, grabbing Luke from Anakin so he could run faster with only one of the children. The men around them paid them no mind, running in the same direction, shouting similar things to each other.

They rounded the last turn, shouts and screams all around them, just as an Imperial TIE fighter buzzed by overhead, its engines a deafening scream. Ships exploded on their platforms in a volley of shrieking bolts, and Anakin's heart stopped as the little vessel that had been their home for a year went up in a violent ball of flame and debris.

"No!" Luke cried as Leia screamed, arms wrapped around Obi-Wan's neck.

Somewhere around them a missile hissed into the air and chased down the fighter before it could get away, sending it careening in a flaming wreck down to slam against three more ships.

 _What now? What now?_ Anakin spun around, looking for a way out. The troops were gaining on them, grinding through the market with ruthless efficiency and firing at anyone that tried to run, ghosts hidden by the tarps and tents they ran past in the distance, drawing closer with every second.

"You! Jedi! Come on!" one of the armed rebels from earlier shouted as he ran past. "We're getting out of here!"

Anakin and Obi-Wan exchanged looks for only a second before following, the children crying and wailing but safe in their arms and safe if they could only go with these people and make it out of here.

Running in long, frightened strides, they pounded up a landing ramp into a larger ship along with a motley and equally terrified crew shouting about spin-ups and engines starting. Left alone in the main cabin as the rebels scattered off to their stations, Anakin and Obi-Wan looked at each other and the other panicked travelers that had joined them on board over the heads of the children, trying to soothe them with quiet words despite the alarms blaring and the ship rattling as its guns swirled and fired on the soldiers taking aim from the market.

"We are not leaving without her!" an older man with a shock of grey hair declared into a com on his wrist, shoving through people toward the landing ramp. "Shut up and listen! Keep the guns going, and the second I tell you, we lift off. Not before!" He came to a halt, bewildered. "Say again? Jedi? Masks?"

He looked around and found Anakin and Obi-Wan immediately, the others who had seen them fight stepping back as if the man's intent stare would cut them. "You two. You Jedi?"

"Yes," Obi-Wan said with some reluctance, handing a sniffling Luke off to Anakin and stepping forward in front of the three of them, his mask and voice unreadable.

"Our friend, the one with the white sabers, used to be a Jedi. So you can talk to her, right?"

"In the Force, you mean?" Obi-Wan asked, heart pounding faster.

"Yeah, however you guys do it! We need her back on this ship now because scans tell us we have about a four-minute window left to launch and get out of here before Imperial fighters arrive from orbit and we're screwed. Tell her."

Obi-Wan nodded, not daring to disagree but horrified that reaching out to her would distract her and might cost her her life if she was still fighting the Inquisitor. He closed his eyes and stretched out with the Force, sending it in an unseen wave away from his mind, washing over all of the people around him like a low tide on a shore, searching out the Force-sensitive that was not the towering mountain and little hills behind him.

"Here!" she called, thudding up the planks, calling out to him or the grey-haired man, Obi-Wan wasn't sure, and there was no time for recognition, if there was any on her part. She and the man rushed past them to the front of the ship and then everyone was diving into seats and slapping belts over themselves, the engines spinning up with a roar all around them.

Anakin and Obi-Wan were on a bench, the two children tucked protectively between them and the men fumbling with tightening the belts to their small bodies. Anakin got the last strap clicked into place just as the ship lifted in a gut-wrenching thrust of power and spun, acceleration and they shot forward and up slamming them back into their seats. Of the two dozen or so travelers who were now with them in this main area, some prayed and a few passed out, others gripping the seats hard enough their knuckles went white.

Whispering soothing words, not daring to use the Force just now, Obi-Wan and Anakin both kept their arms around the children, shielding them as Luke clutched Anakin's arm like a drowning man and Leia bawled against Obi-Wan's chest, soaking the grey layers of his collars.

There was silence from the compartments and halls all around them: right now both men knew the crew was winging their way up and out of the atmosphere, and from the occasional rattle and curse that echoed out they were being fired on. _Not like this. Please don't let my children die like this,_ Anakin begged fate, imploring it to spare his innocent son and daughter any cosmic retribution intended for him. There was no thrill in the chance of death, none of the joyful defiance in his heart piloting through a battle had always given him. There was only fear for his children, searing and limitless.

When the distinct pause and snap of a hyperdrive engine engaging fluttered through their stomachs, tears rolled down his face, hidden behind the mask and warm on his cheeks. _Thank you. Thank you,_ he repeated over and over again, leaning his head back against the padded seat and closing his eyes as cries of relief and happiness went up simultaneously through the ship.

* * *

Obi-Wan Kenobi, the man formerly known as the Negotiator, willed his own fear and thankfulness into silence as he watched people begin to take off their belts and stand, strangers hugging each other with shaky hands still trembling with adrenaline and some dropping to their knees to cry or send up thanks to a deity or ancestor.

He had been in too many battles of armies and of the soul to do any of those things, and that familiarity with death, that knowledge of its taste and smell always just behind him, let him focus instead on the most pressing, stunning matter at hand.

Ahsoka Tano was here. Not just here on the ship.

She had come through the door toward the front and was walking directly back toward them, taller and more graceful than he remembered, a wolf cub who had finally grown into her sharp fangs. A storm of emotions darkened her blue eyes, not as wide as they used to be, and he was relieved to see anger was not the primary one. There was curiosity, and relief, and only a little wariness behind the adrenaline still draining away.

It was his turn to almost cry at the sight of her, rumors and talk nothing compared to the undeniable reality of her being alive and healthy and herself after all of this time. But despite this joyful relief deep in his soul, Obi-Wan had no idea what to say to her as she came in a swirl of cloak to stop in front of them, the children forgetting the terror of the brutal evacuation as they stared up at her.

"Are you a Jedi?" Luke asked, awestruck as she pulled her hood down and the swath of fabric that had covered her face. Obi-Wan realized this might be the first Togruta Luke and Leia had ever seen close up, and Ahsoka's montrals and lekku had grown along with her, a taller halo of blue and white framing her more angular face.

"No, but I was. Are they?" she replied with a gentle smile, gesturing to Obi-Wan and then Anakin, who was motionless and staring up at her through his mask.

"I am, my dear," Obi-Wan said, and reached up to push his own hood off with one hand and slide his mask off with the other, heart stopping as he did. It felt like he was taking off a suit helmet in the middle of deep space: he prayed for the sake of the children there would somehow be air on the other side rather than the void.

Ahsoka froze as still as Anakin.

The happy celebration of the crowd and crew around them forgotten, Ahsoka gaped at him so long Leia wiped some of her own tears away and helpfully pointed at him, using the public names the men had chosen on several months ago. "He's called 'Old Man.'"

"Hello," he whispered, sending the Force out in a hesitant, unsure greeting buoyed by deep fondness. "It's good to see you," he continued, avoiding her name in case she had also had to leave hers behind.

"Old Man, huh?" she smiled, voice trembling as she fought back tears, covering her hand with her mouth and glancing over, puzzled, at the unmoving Anakin. "Who is this?"

"That's Blackbird," Luke answered from his lap, his arms still tight around Anakin's.

"Could we… talk somewhere? Privately?" Obi-Wan asked, drawing her attention back to him as he rubbed Leia's back as soothingly as he could. The tension singing through his soul was so strong it was almost unbearable. _Carefully. Carefully, Obi-Wan_ , he cautioned himself.

"Yeah," she nodded, wiping at her eyes and beaming at him as Leia reached out for her to pick her up, entranced by her lekku. "I am so glad to see you alive, Ob- Old Man. You have no idea how happy I am you're all right." She picked up Leia easily and smiled at her. "What's your name?"

"Leia, and this is Luke." There had been no reason to give them different first names, no one aware of them save their own mother for the first five years of their lives, and Anakin quietly lifted Luke to follow them back as they went, his guilt and humiliation pulsing through the bond he shared with Obi-Wan.

Somewhere private ended up being a small dining room that had once been meant for officers but clearly now was more of a general storage room. Supplies stood in crates and boxes all around the walls, leaving just enough room to squeeze in and sit at the table in the middle.

Ahsoka held the door for them and shut it after waving off one of the rest of the crew, saying she'd found an old friend and to leave them alone for a while. "The Captain can catch me up later, but I assume we're sticking to the original course, right? Just after a few jumps?"

Obi-Wan heard agreement, and then the door was shut and she was looking at him and his unmasked face with wonderment. "You're alive. I just can't believe it."

He nodded, not trusting his own voice, glancing over at Anakin. _There is no way to lead into this gently._ "You're all fighting with the rebels?"

"We're on our way to join up with them. Just kind of a ragtag group for now." She smiled at him. "But I guess not too ragtag if they sent an Inquisitor after us."

"I don't think they were looking for you," Obi-Wan offered weakly, at a complete loss for what to say as he looked up into her curious face.

"Why?"

And then a voice she hadn't heard in years, not really, because she never counted the icy tones of Lord Vader on the Holonet as the same person, spoke behind her, 'Blackbird' taking his mask off to reveal a face she knew as well as her own. "They were probably looking for me."


	20. Refugee

Ahsoka Tano had seen a lot in her time since she'd left the Temple, falsely accused of a terrorist attack she'd had no part in, her heart-wrenching decision not to return to the Order saving her life in the end as she was passed over when the great Jedi Purge had rolled through the galaxy in a wave of betrayal and death.

She'd run with refugees and the occasional pirate ship, watching from the edges of civilization on the Outer Rim as the Empire grew. She'd helped the opposition where she could, offering muscle to loosely organized bands running supplies or information to those who stood against what had arisen from the ashes of the Clone Wars. She'd privately mourned the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi, her dear mentor, and her Master, Anakin Skywalker.

Because the face that was on every holo and hung up on every street corner of the Mid Rim and Core worlds for those first handful of years of the Empire was not her master. Ahsoka had sat on a high roof once, half-drunk and staring up at one of the larger banners that bore his profile on an even taller building, trying to reconcile her memories of her master with this perfectly cruel creature with brown eyes she knew had to be yellow in real life, but she couldn't make it happen.

Vader was not her master.

Vader had taken over her master. Somehow. It was the only way she could reconcile what had happened, the only way it could make any sense.

And now, all these years later, her master was here. Not Vader. Anakin Skywalker. Right here, sitting in the ship she rode in, with two small children on his lap and Obi-Wan Kenobi next to him.

 _I should have known_ , she thought in a daze, resisting a laugh at the sheer insanity of it all. _Kenobi means Skywalker._

 _But how?_

Anakin looked up at her, blue eyes the same color as all her memories of him wide with emotion: fear, shame, hope. She had never seen him look so vulnerable, and it kept her hands from darting to her sabers as she realized from his expression that he was absolutely no threat to her. Or anyone on the ship.

"Hello, Ahsoka," he said in a hoarse whisper.

"Anakin," she answered, testing the word out, finding it strange to call him anything but master but unable to bring that title to her lips even if for old time's sake. _Anakin Skywalker is gone_ , she had told herself so many times, repeating it like a mantra.

And that had been for the best.

If Anakin Skywalker still lived, then the horrors Vader had visited upon the galaxy had not really been Vader. They had been Anakin all along. Tears welled up in her eyes and she took a step back, trying to move away from the anger that swelled up inside as Anakin stood, gently moving the children over to Obi-Wan as he did.

"Did the Emperor make you do all of those horrible things?" she whispered as Obi-Wan wrapped his arms around the children, gently folding their faces in against his chest even as they tried to stare.

"No," Anakin said, gaze fixed on the ground, hope that she would accept him draining from his voice and leaving his heart empty and hollow. "I chose to."

 _No. That is not what you are supposed to say! There is no way you would choose to do those… those things!_ Glancing at the children, Ahsoka fought the urge to hit him, her hands curled into trembling fists at her side. "Why? Why would you do any of that?"

"He told me he could save Padme from dying in childbirth," he told the floor, unable to look up and meet her eyes. "I… I loved her so much, Ahsoka. You knew about us."

"I did. She was my friend too," she retorted. "And when she died anyway you decided the rest of the galaxy would suffer alongside you?" she hissed, jabbing a finger in his chest. "Is that what you thought was right, or fair?" _Do you know how many systems fell under the Emperor's sway because of you? How many millions you doomed to his rule?_

Her anger beat against his mind like a sandstorm against the shutters of his childhood home. "There is nothing I can say to atone for what I've done," he said quietly, making no attempt to stop her or correct her about the date of Padme's death. _She is dead and I killed her_ , he thought to himself, a fact that haunted him and would haunt him, he felt, for the rest of his life.

"No, there isn't! And why are you with him?" She turned to glare at Obi-Wan in utter frustration, waving her hands in confusion. _This doesn't make any sense! You know better! How could you stand next to him after everything that's happened?_

"Because he is trying to come back to the Light, Ahsoka," Obi-Wan answered both her spoken and unspoken questions as they beat against his mind through the Force, his own slate blue eyes intent on her. "Please, Ahsoka. Please do not tell anyone who he is. For the sake of the children."

 _Children…_

Her eyes dropped to the twins huddling against the grey folds of Obi-Wan's clothing, to the dark hair of the girl and bright blue eyes of the boy. "They're yours," she murmured to Anakin, shocked.

"They're Padme's," Obi-Wan said meaningfully as Anakin struggled to find something to say. "The children of Padme Amidala."

 _Padme..._ At his words Ahsoka's rage disappeared as quickly as a candle snuffed out by wind, only a long, wavering trail of sadness rising like smoke in its wake.

Luke and Leia peered up at her from the shelter of Obi-Wan's arms, tense and exhausted, not understanding what was happening but wanting it to stop all the same.

"Please don't hurt Papa," Leia said sadly, watching the anxious swirl of the Force around Ahsoka. "He's a good dragon now."

"I… I don't understand. Please, Obi-Wan," she begged, sitting down across from him and burying her face in her hands so she wouldn't have to look at Anakin. Her heart couldn't bear that for now, all the conflicting emotions that he represented. "Please just tell me what happened."

"I will, Ahsoka, I promise," he said, reaching out through the tangle of Luke and Leia to rest a gentle hand on her knee. "But perhaps we should all get some rest first? I swear on my life he means no harm to you or anyone on this ship, and that he is no longer with the Empire. Please do not tell anyone about him."

 _It's not that easy, Master,_ she wanted to say to Obi-Wan, but the words wouldn't come. _A pair of blue eyes and "I'm sorry" don't matter in the face of what he did._

 _So why do I still feel so much for him?_

The silence between them all stretched out as Ahsoka considered her reply, only the rustle of the children wriggling impatiently in Obi-Wan's arms making any sound over the low hum of the ship systems themselves.

 _He has children. They shouldn't suffer for what their father did._

Just as she opened her mouth to agree with Obi-Wan's plea, a sudden hammering on the door startled all of them, and Ahsoka flew out of her seat to hurry over and throw the door open as Anakin and Obi-Wan both hurriedly slid their masks back on. "Yes? What is it, Captain?"

"Right before we jumped to hyperspace we got a very interesting com from one of the Imperial ships," the grey-haired man on the other side said, hefting a blaster up into view to point past her into the room. Three crewmen stood behind him, their own blasters at the ready. "The boys just got it to me. Imps offered us a heap of credits to bring them the two Jedi we brought on board. They said one of them is actually Vader and we'd get five million credits if we returned him alive."

"What?" she snapped, straightening her shoulders and glaring down at him. "That's nonsense. Everyone knows Vader died in a battle awhile back."

"Oh, I agree," he nodded, not putting the blaster down. "But you know, Tano, it got me rather curious. Maybe Vader is more clever than we all gave him credit for. Because if you ask me, Vader is the only guy I can think of that the Empire would be willing to even pretend to pay that kind of money for. Or feel the need to send three Inquisitors after instead of just troops."

"There were three?" she asked, trying to stall as she tried desperately to protect the same man she'd just been so enraged at. It was one thing to be angry with him, and another to want him dead now that she knew he had children. _They might just kill Anakin when they see who he is!_

"One each at the other two major ports while hell was breaking loose at ours, chatter said. Now out of the way, please," he said, gesturing with his blaster. "I know how protective you are of Jedi survivors but we need to make sure that bastard isn't here pretending to be one."

She stepped back into the room, Obi-Wan's tense voice drawing her to him. "Come take the children, Ahsoka. Please."

 _What do I do, Obi-Wan?_ she begged him silently.

 _Whatever they say, Ahsoka,_ came the cold, resigned answer. _We can't fight in a small space like this without the children getting hurt._ "Come now, Luke. You too, Leia. Why don't you go with Ahsoka? She'll take care of you for a little while while your father and I talk with these men."

The children for their part only clung tighter to his robes and cloak, Luke holding out a hand to grip Anakin's as well. Anakin said nothing, but ever so delicately took Luke's hand and stroked it once with his thumb, running the finger over his son's tiny knuckles. Then he gently pulled Luke's hand off his cloak, standing and taking a step forward to meet the men coming in.

Obi-Wan murmured something to the children through his mask, something too soft for Ahsoka to hear, and they slid to the floor and ran to throw their arms around Ahsoka's legs, sniffling as they went.

"Well, let's see your faces, gentlemen," the captain said with no enthusiasm, only dread. "Let's get this over with."

He frowned in horrified disgust as Anakin repeated the same awful magic trick he'd performed with Ahsoka, sliding his mask up to reveal a face that was impossible, a face that had no right to be in the mundane confines of a storage room on this little ship in the middle of nowhere. "It is him!"

Anakin stared ahead, saying nothing at the collective gasp that went up from the men in the room and the four blasters that were suddenly aimed directly at him, metal clanking and the faint whine of the two older models powering up. He stood perfectly still, a statue in dark brown, forcing himself to look ahead and not back to his children. _I have to stay calm so Luke and Leia won't be frightened_ , he told himself, knowing that he didn't dare call upon the Force or draw his saber in such a crowded space with weapons less than an arm's length from him.

 _No anger. No fear,_ he tried to remind himself as the men muttered to each other and his gaze fell to the barrel of the blaster closest to his face, the captain's. It yawned like a black hole, cold and uncaring. He couldn't look away. _I love you, Luke. I love you, Leia,_ he said silently, trying to allow only that simple, warm truth to escape his mind and reach theirs.

"Get the kids out of here. Take them to one of the empty rooms," the captain ordered Ahsoka with a wave of his weapon, and with a last torn look at the two men Ahsoka hurried the now-crying children out of the room and shut the door behind her.

Obi-Wan slowly stood up next to Anakin, removing his own mask, and did his best to stay calm as well while Anakin closed his eyes, awaiting his possible fate with his heart thudding almost painfully against his chest and only despair that it could end like this, when he had so much more to make up for. _At least Obi-Wan is next to me._

"Do you recognize me as well?" Obi-Wan asked, grim and stony as he looked around, meeting each of the men's eyes with his own as he dropped the mask to clatter on the plastisteel of the table in front of him.

"General Kenobi?" the captain said in awe as the others muttered agreement and then questions flew through the air so laden with tension it felt as if a bomb had been set in the very middle of the room. "Did you catch him? Are you taking him to the Rebellion? The Empire said you were dead! Are you working with the Rebels?"

"Vader has renounced that name and come over to our side to fight for the Rebellion as he once fought for the Republic, as Anakin Skywalker," Obi-Wan explained, careful not to make any sudden motions as he held up his hands in an appeal. "Please, Captain, if you won't have your men put their weapons away, at least lower them?"

"How do we know he's not controlling you?" one of the younger men interrupted, all of them keeping their weapons raised. "There are stories like that about him."

"It only works on the weak-minded," Obi-Wan said with a rueful smile. "I am far from that, sir."

He glanced over at Anakin, at the increasing wave of fear circling around him in the Force even as he stood still with his eyes closed and hands loose at his sides. _I need to do something quickly before he strikes out at them in panic. Think, Obi-Wan!_

And then a stun bolt hit Anakin, hard enough of an impact at this close of a range to send him flying back into the wall with a rough cry of pain before he slid unconscious to the floor, the sharp acid smell of electricity flooding the room.

"No!" Whirling, Obi-Wan found himself looking down the barrel of the captain's blaster almost directly in his face.

"Sorry, Kenobi. But we're about to meet up with the Rebellion in a few days if everything goes right. They can decide if he's really come over to our side or not."

Obi-Wan felt the sharp, suffocating hand of rage close around his own throat, stopping all of his words even as it curled his hands into fists.

"So you can go in a cell with him or stay out here with your kids," the captain offered from the other end of the blaster. "But I'm not having that monster loose on my ship until then."

"I… Yes, I understand," Obi-Wan forced himself to say, violently fighting down a dark urge he had not felt since a broken dawn on a long-ago beach. _I must remain in control. For the sake of Anakin and the children. I must. I must._ "I will stay with the children, Captain."


	21. Chapter 21

Hello all! This is an update to let my readers know that, for a couple of reasons, I've moved over entirely to the fic site Archive of Our Own. I don't think I can include a link here, but if you search Archive of Our Own for lilyconrad, you'll find this story there and future updates for it. Thank you so much for reading and for your reviews! Hope to see you there!


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